


Princess of Denmark

by cdybedahl



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 10:55:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4260681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/pseuds/cdybedahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beca hooked up with Kommissar after the Riff-Off, and discovered that she's not as straight as she thought. Which lead to her long-time close friendship with Chloe getting an upgrade to full-on girlfriends relationship. Now they're going to Copenhagen for the World Championship. Where Kommissar will most definitely be present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct sequel to my story [Reciting Sappho](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4067464).

The flight from Atlanta to Copenhagen takes a bit over fifteen hours, with a change in London, and they’re flying coach. For once, Beca’s short stature is an advantage. In the seat next to her, Chloe’s knees nearly touche the seat in front. Across the aisle, Stacie has to sit slightly askew, since the distance from the back of her seat to the one in front is actually shorter than her thighbones are long. But there is nothing to do about it. Beca had one look at the cost of flying Business Class or First Class, and nearly fainted. If they want to go to Copenhagen and become world champions, this is it. All they can do is sit there and suffer.  
Somewhere over the Atlantic Beca notices that Chloe is getting tense. At first, she simply attributes it to the stressful environment in the plane. But she steadily gets more and more tense, and when they have only an hour or two left to London it’s gone far past anything Beca feels is reasonable. She knows Chloe quite well, after all, even if they have only been girlfriends for a few weeks.  
“Hey,” she says, putting her hand on Chloe’s thigh and stroking it gently. “What’s wrong?”  
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Chloe says, giving her a brief smile.  
“Chloe,” Beca says. “You only say it’s nothing when it’s something. So spill.”  
Chloe sighs.  
“ _She_ will be there,” she says. “I know it’s silly, but it’s making me nervous.”  
“She who?” Beca says.  
Before Chloe has time to answer Beca realizes who she means.  
“Oh,” she says. “ _Her_.”  
Kommissar. The leader of Das Sound Machine. The first woman Beca ever slept with, and so far the only one except for Chloe.  
“Do you want to talk about it?” Beca says.  
“Do you?” Chloe says.  
It’s a good question. So far, Kommissar has been a sort of no-go zone in their relationship. She’s been alluded to, obliquely referred to, hinted at and occasionally even briefly mentioned, but never outright talked about.  
“Not really,” Beca says. “But I think we should.”  
Just saying that makes her feel all mature and grown up. Trying to do the right thing because she knows that if they keep putting it off it’ll just keep getting worse until it blows up. Better to take care of it before that happens.  
“Do you want to sleep with her again?” Chloe says.  
Beca can’t even count the number of times she’s watched Das Sound Machine videos on Youtube just to see Kommissar, mostly as a prelude to getting herself off. She still finds the German woman unbelievably hot.  
“Kind of,” she says. “But I’m with you now, so it’s not going to happen.”  
“I know I’m being silly,” Chloe says. “And I do trust you. But I can’t help being nervous anyway. What if she just sweeps you off your feet again? I know the sex you had with her was better than what we have, even though you won’t admit it.”  
Beca wishes she could tell Chloe that she’s wrong. But she doesn’t want to lie.  
“How long have you known me?” Beca says.  
“Four years,” Chloe says.  
“In that time, have I ever seemed to be the kind of person who’d go running after someone just for hot sex?”  
“Not really. But you kind of did, with her.”  
“But I didn’t have you to lose then,” she says. “I had no reason not to do it. Please, Chloe, don’t worry. I love you. Even before you were my girlfriend, you were the best friend I ever had, and I wouldn’t have been able to stand losing you even then. Much less now.”  
Chloe smiles. She looks calmer. She puts her hand on top of Beca’s and squeezes it.  
“Thanks,” she says. “I love you too.”  
Beca leans her head against Chloe, snuggles in as much as the uncomfortable seat allows and tries to sleep.

  
  


Eventually they land at Copenhagen Airport. They’re all let into the country without problems. All their baggage has made it through intact. The customs people just wave them through. It’s all quite smooth, to Beca’s great relief. She’d feared that they’d have to negotiate some Kafkaesque bureaucratic process in a language none of them speak before they’d be let out onto Danish soil. When she walks through the automatic doors that separate the customs passage from the waiting area outside, the only thing in Beca’s mind is finding a couple of taxis to take them all to their hotel. So, of course, the first thing she sees is Kommissar.  
Beca can’t even say how she knows it is Kommissar, at first. She just sort of sweeps her eyes around the huge room and the sparse crowd filling it, and in one place her eyes just stop. That place is a tall woman with a blonde braid hanging down almost to her waist. She’s wearing a slate gray jacket and a matching skirt that ends maybe four inches above the knees. Below that are bare legs down to a pair of Burgundy red pumps. The realization that she knows exactly what those legs feel like is growing in Beca when the woman turns her head so Beca can see her face. A shockwave of desire goes through her, so strong that she has to bite down on her lip to prevent a moan from getting out.  
Kommissar turns around even farther, obviously having seen something out of the corner of her eye. Across the hall, their eyes meet. For a breath or two, they just look at each other. Then Kommissar lowers her head a little and _smiles_. A shudder goes through Beca’s entire body, and this time a moan _does_ escape her. She tears her gaze away, and she imagines that she can hear a teasing chuckle in the distance.  
Oh, Beca wants to fuck Kommissar again, all right. Wants to real bad.  
“Oh, hey, fans!” she hears Stacie says. “Cool!”  
“It’s Benji!” Emily squeals.  
“And Jesse,” Chloe says, with markedly less enthusiasm.  
Jesse?  
Beca turns to look, and it’s him all right. He and Benji are standing there, with placards saying things like “Go Bellas!” and “Bellas World Champions!”. They’re cheering and waving, and Benji is even throwing confetti around. Ridiculous as it is, they’re actually a pretty good two-person cheering crowd. They’re also approaching at an alarming pace. At least it’s alarming to Beca. She quickly moves her wheeled suitcase so it’s in between her and Jesse.  
“What are you guys doing here?” Fat Amy asks when the two guys are close enough.  
“What does it look like?” Jesse says.  
“Cheering for you guys!” Benji says.  
Jesse beams at Beca, with only a barely noticeable moment of a frown when he notices her suitcase.  
“You came all the way to Denmark just for that?” Emily says.  
Benji smiles at her.  
“Maybe not _just_ for that,” he says.  
“Wow,” Beca says. “Look, guys, it’s real awesome that you’re here and all, and the confetti is, like, wow, but we’ve just spent the past fifteen hours on airplanes and in airports, so we’re kind of beat. We’ll be kind of crappy company until we’ve had food, sleep and showers.”  
“I once spent thirty-two hours in a laundromat,” Lily whispers.  
“Totally understandable,” Jesse says, looking a bit relieved.  
“And then we’ve got rehearsals,” Beca says. “If we want to win.”  
“Right,” Jesse says, looking less relieved and more annoyed.  
“So, we’ll see you around, ok?” Beca says.  
“Sure,” Jesse says.  
“Of course we will!” Benji says, with ha happy dip of the head. “Go Bellas!”  
They amble off. The Bellas stand there, looking after them.  
“Wow,” Fat Amy says when the guys are well out of earshot, “there’s a guy who can take a breakup.”  
“Yeah,” Stacie says. “He’s taking it _really_ well. Going to Europe and all.”  
“Nobody takes a breakup that well,” Cynthia Rose says.  
“No, they don’t,” Chloe says. “ _Beca_?”  
The whole group turns as one to look at the shorter of their leaders.  
Beca raises her hands defensively.  
“Look,” she says. “I’ve tried, ok? But he just talks and talks and talks and refuses to listen and…”  
“So you dumped him and started shacking up with Red six weeks ago,” Fat Amy says, “and he doesn’t know yet?”  
“Kind of,” Beca says.  
“Oh boy,” Fat Amy says. “I’m sure that’s not going to come back and bite you in your tiny little ass.”  
“Beca!” Chloe says. “You _said_!”  
“I said I _tried_!” Beca says. “Look, that he doesn’t listen is large part of why we’d pretty much failed even before you and I happened. Doesn’t it say something that I’ve been living with someone else for six weeks and he hasn’t noticed yet?”  
Beca can see in Chloe’s eyes that her girlfriend is about to buy her argument. She’s almost started feeling relieved when disaster strikes.  
“Hello, _Mäuschen_ ,” a sultry voice says right behind her back. “Welcome to Europe.”  
Hands land on her shoulders, spin her around and before her tired brain has had anywhere near enough time to react she’s being kissed. Hard. Passionately. Strong arms are embracing her, almost lifting her off the floor. There’s definitely a hand grabbing her ass. And somehow, without her meaning to, she finds herself not only eagerly kissing back, but her hand has ended up inside Kommissar’s jacket fondling her breast.  
In spite of the distraction, she can clearly hear Chloe’s shocked gasp.  
“Wow, people are _very_ friendly in this country!” Emily says.  
“Isn’t that the bitch from Das Sound Machine?” Cynthia Rose says.  
“Ooh, can I grope her too?” Stacie says. “She’s hot.”  
“Beca and she have _history_ ,” Chloe says.  
Her tone of voice is sharp enough to cut diamond. It’s sharp enough to make Beca pull back from Kommissar.  
“Er, hi,” Beca says.  
She rapidly takes a couple of steps back. Not so much to stop Kommissar from getting at her as to prevent herself from grabbing Kommissar.  
“Hi,” Kommissar says.  
Beca gestures at the Bellas behind her.  
“Have you met Chloe?” she says. “My girlfriend?”  
“Your girlfriend?” Kommissar says, smile not wilting even a little bit. “I do apologize, I thought you were still single.”  
“Well, she’s not,” Chloe says.  
“Her boyfriend is around here too,” Fat Amy says.  
Beca glares murder at her.  
“Why,” Kommissar says, smiling at Beca. “You _are_ a busy little mouse.”  
She turns to Chloe.  
“Again, I apologize,” she says. “I hope you can understand how one might act irrationally from attraction to her, yes?”  
“I guess,” Chloe says.  
She looks somewhat mollified, to Beca’s great relief. It doesn’t last long.  
“Let me treat you both to dinner,” Kommissar says. “Tomorrow, at a really nice place. To show that there is no ill will, yes? It is enough that we compete over a capella. As people, I wish us to be friends.”  
“Wait, what?” Beca says. “I’m not sure…”  
“Sure,” Chloe says. “Let’s do that. Tomorrow.”  
Kommissar smiles.  
“Excellent,” she says. “Are you staying at the competition hotel?”  
Most of the Bellas nod.  
“I will see you there tomorrow evening at six, then,” Kommissar says. “Bellas, I look forward to beating you at a capella. I wish you a good night.”  
She turns and leaves, leaving the whole Bellas group staring after her.  
“That woman has some huge metaphorical balls,” Cynthia Rose says.  
“I’m so turned on right now,” Stacie says.  
“Beca, dear?” Chloe says. “I’m going to the hotel now. Are you coming, or do you have any more surprises first?”  
“That was so not my fault!” Beca protests.  
Chloe gives her a cold look.  
“We’ll talk about that later,” she says.  
She starts walking. The other Bellas, including Beca, hurry after her.

  
  


The competition is housing all competitors in a reasonably fancy hotel right next to the airport. Which is practically inside the city as well, it turns out. The rooms are nice, but to Beca’s American eyes quite small. She and Chloe get a room high enough up that they can see the sea, and the bridge over to Sweden. The information pamphlet waiting for them on the room’s narrow desk claims that on a really clear day one can actually see the neighboring country itself. She’s not sure she believes that, but the claim is weird enough. The very idea that she could stand in her hotel room and see another nation is so strnge. More than anything else so far, it brings home to her that she’s no longer in America.  
The unnecessary force with which her girlfriend is opening and closing doors and cupboards as she unpacks tells her that all is not well.  
“Chloe?” she says. “I’m sorry. I really am.”  
Chloe slams a cupboard door shut and turns to Beca.  
“About what?” she says. “Jesse or the German Amazon?”  
“Jesse,” Beca says. “I don’t think it’s my fault that Kommissar jumped me. But Jesse is all mine.”  
Chloe crosses her arms and looks away, the expression on her face hurt.  
“You didn’t exactly push her away,” she says.  
“I’ve told you I think she’s ridiculously hot,” Beca says. “I don’t know how to stop that.”  
Chloe draws a deep breath.  
“You never react like that to me,” she says.  
Carefully, Beca goes over to her. She strokes Chloe’s arm with her fingertips.  
“But I never fell asleep in her arms,” she says. “I never woke up next to her. She never smiled at me and made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”  
Chloe keeps looking hurt for a couple of moments, then she turns to Beca and smiles a little.  
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t worry?”  
“Not for that, at least,” Beca says. “Yeah, she turns me on like… I don’t even know. But she also kind of scares me, and makes me feel uncomfortable, and tiny and weird.”  
She puts her hands on Chloe’s hips.  
“You make me feel safe, and loved, and beautiful,” she says. “I love you.”  
Chloe puts her arms around Beca.  
“And I you,” she says.  
They stand embracing for some time, taking comfort from each others’ warmth.  
“Are we good?” Beca says.  
“We are good,” Chloe says. “And we still have a date tomorrow with the woman who turns you on like you don’t even know.”  
Beca abruptly looks up at her.  
“We’re doing that?”  
“Of course we are!” Chloe says. “She wants to apologize to us. It would be rude not to go.”  
Beca puts her head back to Chloe’s chest.  
“Great,” she says.  
She can’t really say why, but she’s pretty damn sure that Kommissar did not invite them out just to apologize.

  
  


Beca wakes up at five in the morning. Which, if her calculation is correct, is eleven at night back home. She’s feeling that hopeless combination of wide awake and really tired that is jet lag. In spite of the early hour, it’s also full daylight. The sun is shining brightly through the window. Beca tries to go back to sleep for a little while, but gives up. It’s not happening. She slides out of the bed carefully, so as not to wake Chloe. She pulls on a pair of sweatpants, a t-shirt and a hoodie. She slips her iPod in her pocket and her headphones around her neck. The hotel probably hasn’t started serving breakfast yet, but at the very least she’ll be less bored ambling around the corridors listening to music than she’d be sitting in the room afraid to make even the slightest noise.  
So she walks the hotel’s blue carpet, isolated from the world by her headphones and her attitude. She listens to song after song, trying to pick out the ones she can do something with. She walks past the dining room, and just as she thought they’re not opening for another hour and a half. She continues down and in, away from the endless corridors with closed doors into the parts of the hotel meant for other uses. The conference rooms. The room with PCs and printers guests can borrow, an obsolete memory from another time. The laundry. The gym.  
Sounds come from the gym. Sounds loud enough to penetrate Beca’s musical shield. She turns her music off and lifts the headphones from her ears. The sounds are steps, grunts and impacts. She frowns. What the…? Curiosity leads her inside, to see what’s going on.  
The gym is small. Just a single room, with an exercise bike, a cross-trainer, a weight bench and a ceiling-mounted heavy punching bag. It’s the last one that’s making the noises. Not by itself, of course, but because there’s someone punching and kicking it. _Someone_ is six foot of blonde German in gym shorts, sports bra and nothing else. Her hair is bound up in a ponytail, parts of which are stuck to her sweaty skin. She’s moving around at a furious pace, punching and kicking the bag hard enough to make it swing back and forth, smooth athletic muscles playing under her pale skin.  
It may be the hottest thing Beca has ever seen.  
She remains frozen in place, watching Kommissar move, unable to think. Kommissar keeps going, on and on and on, until she jumps up to do a spin-kick and sees Beca while she’s turned away from the bag. She lands, turns around and stands looking at Beca for a few moments, catching her breath.  
“Miss Mitchell,” she finally says. “Are you here to work out?”  
Beca’s eyebrows rise. Miss Mitchell? No mouse-related nickname in German?  
“Er, no,” she says. “I just couldn’t sleep. Heard noises.”  
She’s trying to figure out something more to say when she sees that Kommissar’s eyes are swollen and puffy. She abruptly steps closer and raises her hand to touch Kommissar’s cheek.  
“Hey, have you been crying?” she says. “Did someone hurt you? Do I need to beat them up?”  
Kommissar laughs briefly, a much softer and sadder laugh than anything Beca has heard from her before.  
“I appreciate the offer,” she says, “but I have nothing to blame except my own unrealistic expectations.”  
Beca frowns.  
“But the competition hasn’t even started yet,” she says. “What can you have expected that has failed already?”  
Kommissar looks at her with a strange expression for a few moments. Then it turns into resolve.  
“I expected that when we met here in Copenhagen,” she said, “we would both be single.”  
It takes Beca several seconds to grasp what she just heard, and when it sinks in her mind turns blank from shock.  
“Er,” she says. “Wow.”  
“Now I realize,” Kommissar says, “that of course you are far too attractive to remain single for any length of time.”  
“Are you joking right now?” Beca says. “I really can’t tell.”  
Beca finds it very hard to believe what she’s hearing, but Kommissar looks dead serious.  
Kommissar shakes her head.  
“I am not joking, miss Mitchell,” she says. “It would be easier if I was.”  
Beca shakes her head in an attempt to clear it.  
“All right,” she says. “First, what’s with this miss Mitchell thing? Nobody calls me that except administrators reading off lists. My name’s Beca. And what happened to the mouse thing?”  
“I’m not feeling very playful,” Kommissar says.  
They look at each other.  
“You have a crush on me?” Beca says when she can’t stand the silence any more.  
Kommissar looks away.  
“After our encounter,” she says. “I found I could not forget you.”  
Well, it’s not like Beca has forgotten Kommissar either.  
“I started looking forward to the world competition,” Kommissar continues, “more for the chance to see you than for the competition itself.”  
Her hand moves a little, then falls back, as if she was about to touch Beca but changed her mind.  
“And then,” she says, “I get here and find that you have not only one partner, but two.”  
Beca raises her hands.  
“Ok, Jesse is so over, whatever Amy says,” she says. “I dumped him weeks ago.”  
She bites her lip.  
“He just doesn’t know yet,” honesty forces her to say.  
Kommissar frowns.  
“How can he not know something like that?”  
“We had…,” Beca starts. “We _have_ some serious communication problems.”  
“And you and your pretty _Rotschopf_?”  
It’s Beca’s turn to frown.  
“That means redhead, right? You mean Chloe?”  
“It does,” Kommissar says. “And if that is the name of your girlfriend, then yes.”  
“We communicate just fine,” Beca says. “We’ve been best friends for years.”  
“And now you are lovers.”  
Beca nods.  
“What you and I did last time,” she says, “it kind of woke me up. Made me realize I like women way more than men. I already knew Chloe is bi, but not that she was in love with me. Has been for years.”  
“I’m happy for her,” Kommissar says. “Not many who wait that long get what they desire.”  
Beca gives her a long look.  
“I have no idea what to do about you,” she says. “I’m sorry.”  
Kommissar shakes her head.  
“Don’t be,” she says. “It’s not your fault, nor your responsibility. I’ll be fine.”  
“If you say so,” Beca says.  
They stand there, just looking into each other’s eyes, for quite some time. Time enough the feeling to grow in Beca that’s she’s doing something she shouldn’t. That she’s somehow doing Chloe wrong. She abruptly averts her eyes.  
“I should go,” she says. “Let you get back to your workout.”  
“If you wish,” Kommissar says.  
“Yeah,” Beca says.  
She backs up a few steps before she can turn away. Moments after she does, the sound of fists hitting the punching bag resumes. Just as she’s about to walk out the gym door, a thought occurs to her. She turns back to Kommissar.  
“Hey,” she says.  
Kommissar stops punching the bag.  
“Yes?” she says.  
“Do you still want to go out tonight?” Beca says. “With me and Chloe? I’ll totally understand if you don’t.”  
“I do,” Kommissar says. “I’ll see you tonight.”  
Beca nods and opens the door. As it’s closing behind her, she just barely hears Kommissar softly say something more.  
“ _Liebling Maus_.”

  
  


The bed is empty and the shower running when Beca returns to the room. The shower is the kind that doubles as a bath tub, so there’s plenty of space in it. Beca strips out of her clothes and steps into it. Without a word, she wraps her arms around the wet and soaped-up Chloe and hugs her as hard as she can.  
“Hey,” Chloe says. “What’s wrong?”  
She returns Beca’s embrace, gently stroking the shorter girl’s back.  
“Kommissar’s in love with me,” Beca says.  
She feels Chloe stiffen a little.  
“What makes you think that?” Chloe says.  
“She told me,” Beca says.  
“She told you? When?”  
“Just now,” Beca says. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk and ran into her.”  
“And she just blurted that out?”  
Beca shakes her head.  
“I saw that she’d been crying,” she says. “So I asked why. We got talking.”  
“I see,” Chloe says.  
Beca doesn’t. She’s not sure what she thinks about Kommissar’s confession. Or, more importantly, what she feels about it. Except confused. She’s definitely confused. When she’d returned to their room, she’d needed to be close to Chloe. To touch her, feel her presence. But now that she’s got Chloe right next to her, naked skin touching naked skin, she’s suddenly less sure. Yes, she loves Chloe, and yes, Chloe is all kinds of hot, and yes, Beca loves touching her. A lot. She’s sure that Chloe loves her. That Chloe has loved her for a long time. For _years_.  
Without saying anything. Without ever approaching her, in that way. For four years, Chloe was right there next to Beca. Being her best friend. Watching her slow, passionless relationship with Jesse. Listening to her complain. Holding her when she needed comfort (and how stupid had _Beca_ been, not realizing something was up when her first go-to for closeness was always Chloe, never Jesse).  
How much can Chloe really have loved her, if she could live with standing on the sidelines like that?  
Kommissar went for Beca from the get-go. No hesitation, no doubt. Sure, it may well have been purely physical. But she _did_ something. And after, she had said, there had been more. She’d missed Beca. Looked forward to meeting her. Looked forward to them having sex again. And when that was denied, when Kommissar found that Beca was already taken, she was hurt. After putting up a front, so as not to hurt Beca, she cried. She hit things.  
Beca has no idea if she’s ever made Chloe hurt like that. She gathers her courage.  
“Chloe?” she says.  
“Yes, dear?” Chloe says, stroking her hair.  
“Did you ever cry over me?”  
Chloe is silent for a while.  
“I don’t remember,” she finally says. “I’m a pretty happy person. I don’t cry very easy.”  
Beca puts her ear to Chloe’s chest. She can hear her heart beat.  
“Did I ever make you cry?” Chloe asks.  
Beca very nearly lets the words _not yet_ slip out.  
“No,” she says.  
“There, you see,” Chloe says. “All is good.”  
“Yeah,” Beca says. “All is good.”  
Except it isn’t. Kommissar’s tear-reddened eyes have gotten stuck in Beca’s heart. Nobody has wanted her that much before. Ever. It’s a weird feeling. Also very, very tempting. She has no idea what to do.  
“Are you hungry?” Chloe asks.  
“Not particularly,” Beca says. “I could eat, if you are.”  
Chloe’s hand glides down Beca’s back until it’s grabbing her ass.  
“I’m not,” Chloe says. “At least not for food.”  
Beca tilts her head up and kisses her girlfriend.

  
  


On Aubrey’s insistence, they’ve arrived early enough to take an entire day to get over the jet lag. Around lunch, when her body insists it’s actually six in the morning and far past time to go to sleep, Beca really appreciates that. She’d been reluctant at first, of course, since it meant taking a whole extra day off from her internship, but now she’s trying to send Aubrey telepathic thank-you messages. If the rest of the Bellas are feeling anything like Beca, any rehearsal would be a colossal waste of time.  
“Wow, they really do like their fish, don’t they?” Cynthia Rose says.  
She sitting across the table from Beca, reading the menu. Next to her is Fat Amy. Next to Beca is, of course, Chloe. Filling out the rest of the table are the rest of the Bellas.  
Almost.  
“Where is Stacie?” Beca asks.  
Emily, Fat Amy and Chloe speak at the same time.  
“With the cute danish guy who checked us in last night.”  
“With the hot danish stewardess from the plane we came with.”  
“With that totally stacked Danish chick we met at breakfast.”  
Beca looks from one to the other.  
“I was going to ask which one it is,” she says, “but the truth is I have no problem believing it’s all of them.”  
“At once or one after the other?” Chloe says.  
“Either,” Cynthia Rose says.  
Emily the Legacy looks shocked.  
“How can you talk about her like this?!” she says.  
“Er, because we know her?” Fat Amy says.  
“Stacie likes sex,” Chloe says.  
“A lot,” Beca says.  
Emily looks from one of the to the next, aghast.  
“And you’re all OK with this?” she says.  
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Fat Amy says.  
“She’s always careful to be clear about what she wants from her partners,” Chloe says. “And you’ll have to look hard to find someone who knows more about safe sex.”  
“Also, Denmark sure has a lot of attractive people,” Cynthia Rose says.  
“And Germany,” Fat Amy says. “Or what do you say, Beca?”  
“I have no idea what you mean,” Beca says, blushing intensely.  
“Tall? Blonde? Tried to lick your tonsils yesterday at the airport?” Cynthia Rose says.  
“It was a complete misunderstanding,” Beca says.  
“Yeah maybe, but you still think she’s hot, don’t you?” Fat Amy says.  
“Can we talk about something else?” Chloe says. “What are you guys ordering?”  
“I don’t know,” Fat Amy says. “My Danish is a mite rusty.”  
“They’ve got English translations underneath the Danish names,” Emily says.  
“They sure seem to like their fish,” Chloe says.  
Beca keeps silent, trying to calm herself and stop blushing.  
On the other side of the table, Cynthia Rose looks from Beca to Chloe and frowns.

  



	2. Dinner for Three

The reception desk calls their room at six o’clock exactly, announcing that they have a visitor waiting in the lobby. Both Beca and Chloe are dressed and ready to go. Which is unusual. Chloe is one of those people who always underestimate how long they’ll need to get ready, so they usually leave late. But not today. Not now. Chloe put the finishing touches on her going-out makeup five minutes ago. Beca, as usual, finished her preparations within seconds of the appointed time. She takes pride in getting it as close as possible, even though she’s the only one who notices.  
Chloe is wearing a knee-long arm-less and mostly back-less white dress. She looks gorgeous in it. Beca is wearing the clothes she brought for the after-competition party. Black leather pants. Blue silk blouse. Black leather vest. Knee-high boots with four-inch heels. It’s only now that she’s put it all on that it strikes her how much it looks like a tame version of the outfit Kommissar wore at the riff-off.  
“Shall we go?” she says.  
“Yeah,” Chloe says.  
There is a tension between them unlike anything Beca has felt before. She has no idea how to deal with it. When the elevator doors close behind them, she turns to Chloe.  
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she says.  
“Of course,” Chloe says. “Don’t you?”  
“Oh, yeah,” Beca says. “We’re just having dinner with a foreign friend, right?”  
“Right,” Chloe says.  
A foreign friend who’s in love with Beca. A foreign friend Beca’s not sure what she feels for, but she sure is feeling _something_ for her. She takes Chloe’s hand and squeezes it for reassurance. Her own or Chloe’s, she cannot say.  
The elevator doors open again, and Beca sees Kommissar.  
She’s wearing grey dress pants with creases sharp enough to cut, a white mens’ shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, brown suspenders slightly pushed apart by her bust, and a burgundy tie. Her hair is in a long pony-tail under a fedora matching the pants, and on her feet are black pumps.   
Desire hits Beca like a visceral shock, with enough force that she forgets to move. It’s only because Chloe pulls at her hand that she manages to get out of the elevator before the doors close again.  
“Oh, there she is,” Chloe says. “She’s looking good, don’t you think?”  
Oh yes, Beca does. It’s all she can do not to drool as they walk up to Kommissar.  
“Ah, there you are,” Kommissar says when they reach her.  
She holds out her hand.  
“It’s nice seeing you,” she says.  
Chloe shakes her hand.  
“Likewise,” she says.  
Kommissar reaches toward Beca. Beca takes it. She’s trying not to look as eager as she feels.  
“It’s good to see you again, _Mäuschen_ ,” Kommissar says, smiling.  
“You too,” Beca says.  
Kommissar’s hand is just as soft and strong as she remembers. They both hold on just a little bit too long before they let go.  
“So where are we going?” Chloe asks.  
“If you’re not too hungry,” Kommissar says, “I suggest we start with a canal boat tour. It takes about an hour and a half, and it’s a good way to see the city.”  
“Yeah, sure,” Chloe says.  
Beca doesn’t trust her voice, so she just nods.

  
  


The boat is long and shallow. It’s got two rows of seats wide enough for three, with an aisle down between them. It’s open to the air, except for a cloth roof held up by poles along the railings. The captain, or driver, or whatever they should be called for a craft like this, sits at the front. Up there is also a tour guide, talking about the buildings and sights they float past. Her English is quite heavily accented, but Beca has no problems understanding. Or at least none that have anything to do with the guide. That’s she’s squeezed in between her girlfriend and the girl she desperately desires is a much stronger distraction.  
“It’s a very pretty city,” Chloe says.  
“It is, isn’t it?” Kommissar says. “I like it here.”  
“Do you come here often?”  
“Not really. On occasion.”  
“It’s a long trip, I guess.”  
“Not that long. I live in Hamburg. It is only about two hundred miles from Copenhagen.”  
Hamburg. Kommissar lives in Hamburg. That’s the first personal thing Beca has learned about her. Not counting the sounds she makes while having an orgasm.  
“What’s your name?” Beca says, acting before she can think. “I mean, Kommissar is a title, right?”  
Kommissar smiles.  
“It’s a title, yes. And it’s not what it says in my passport,” she says. “I got it as a nickname in Kindergarten. It stuck. I really should change to it officially some time.”  
She smiles down at Beca.  
“They tell me I was bossy and a stickler for rules,” she says.  
“Imagine that,” Beca says, lost in Kommissar’s eyes.  
She’s almost started to reach up and pull Kommissar down into a kiss when she feels Chloe’s hand on her thigh. She stops. Confusion and not a little bit of fear floods her mind. She swallows. Oh, this is so not good.  
“So what’s that building?” she says, pointing randomly at something big an impressive.  
“The guide just told us, Beca,” Chloe says.  
“Oh,” Beca says. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”  
Chloe harrumphs. Kommissar turns her head away, but Beca can still se her smirk.  
She swallows. It’s going to be a long evening.

  
  


“Denmark,” Kommissar says, “has always been a very fertile country. As a people, the danes value good food and good drink very highly.”  
They’re in a restaurant right in the middle of Copenhagen. It’s decorated in a rustic style, with bare red brick walls and robust solid wood furniture. The ceiling is really high, with exposed beams. The waiters are wearing something that Beca guesses is modernized versions of traditional peasant garb. The whole place is very stylish. The menu is printed on thick hand-made paper, and if Beca’s mental calculations are correct the prices are quite high. Although that’s when she compares to back home. She has no real idea how they compare to other Danish places.  
“This place,” Kommissar continues, “aims for traditional Danish dishes cooked to perfection using the best ingredients possible. I don’t know what you like, so I thought I’d aim for something that would be interesting even if it turns out not to be to your taste.”  
“I’m sure we’ll love it,” Chloe says.  
“Please, reserve judgment until you’ve tasted it,” Kommissar says. “It may be…”  
She hesitates.  
“This may sound like I’m criticizing your country,” she says. “But I promise I’m not. It’s just different.”  
Beca frowns.  
“Different how?”  
“This restaurant is _very_ picky about where their ingredients come from,” Kommissar says. “And they want their customers to be too. So if you go to the restaurant’s website, you can follow the whole chain of production, from the field or barn to the kitchen. You can see a picture of the cow you’re about to eat a part of.”  
“Seriously?!” Beca says. “Holy shit!”  
“That’s kind of disturbing,” Chloe says.  
“It’s truth,” Kommissar says. “Most danes will find it perfectly natural, even if a bit overambitious. Americans, in my experience, generally don’t want to know that much detail about what they’re eating.”  
“It’s a bit weird,” Beca says.  
Kommissar just smiles a little.  
“Shall we order?” she says. “Or would you rather go somewhere else? There is a McDonalds not far from here.”  
The thinly veiled challenge makes sure that Beca will eat whatever the place serves, even if she has to choke it down while forcing a smile.  
“I’m game,” she says. “Chlo?”  
“Of course,” Chloe says.  
Beca starts reading the menu for real. Truth is, most of the things on sound delicious. She eventually settles for something the waitress recommends. If she understands correctly, it’s basically a steak with some sort of potatoes, vegetables and flavored butter. Chloe gets a pasta with some kind of fancy Italian ham.  
Kommissar gets a mushroom and chickpea risotto.  
“No meat?” Beca says.  
“No meat,” Kommissar says. “I’m vegetarian.”  
Another thing Beca doesn’t know about Kommissar. This one kind of hurts. Not the fact of it itself, that doesn’t really matter, but that she doesn’t even know something as basic as what Kommissar eats brings home how weak the contact between them really is.  
“You don’t mind that we…?”  
“Of course not,” Kommissar says. “If I did, would I have brought you here? Would you like to share a bottle of wine?”  
“Yes, please,” Chloe says.  
“Sure,” Beca says. “Why not?”

  
  


One shared bottle of wine turns into two before they finish the meal. Which is excellent. Both the wine and the food. They chose a chocolate cake for dessert, which turns out to be divine. The portions are a bit small to her American eyes, but at the end of the meal she’s totally full, so she guesses that doesn’t actually matter. They also manage to stay on safe conversational ground. Music, mostly.  
“So what now?” Chloe asks after the waitress has taken Kommissar’s payment, leaving three pieces of mint chocolate behind.  
Chloe sounds a lot less tense than when they left the hotel. Which makes Beca a lot less tense. She can’t tell if it affects Kommissar at all. Or if she’s even slightly tipsy from the wine. Which Beca sure is, and she’s pretty sure Chloe is too.  
“Well,” Kommissar says. “I said I’d take you to dinner, which I now have. So you’re free to go, if you wish. If not, I know a club not far from here that has live music, a dance floor and really good cocktails.”  
Beca looks at Chloe. She really wants to go, and she really wants to go with Kommissar, but she also really doesn’t want to upset Chloe. Chloe is looking back at Beca. Beca can’t read her expression.  
“Sure,” Chloe says. “Let’s go.”  
She gets up. She’s wobbling slightly.  
“Chloe…” Beca says.  
She puts her hand on Chloe’s arm.  
“I’m fine,” Chloe says. “I’m fine.”  
Maybe she is. Beca makes sure to stay ready to support her, if it turns out to be necessary. Kommissar stays on the other side of Chloe from Beca, obviously ready to do the same. They make their way out of the restaurant without incident.  
“This way,” Kommissar says.  
She leads them along the night streets of Copenhagen. It’s nine in the evening, but still almost as light as in the middle of the day. It’s not really warm any longer, but neither is it cold enough to need a coat. It’s refreshing, really, after the stuffier air in the restaurant. Clears some of the cobwebs out of Beca’s head. It doesn’t seem to have the same effect on Chloe. The opposite, if anything.  
“Kommissar!” the bouncer says when they get to the club. “I heard you were in town.”  
“Hello, Niklas,” Kommissar says. “Meet my worst competitor, Beca of the Barden Bellas.”  
Niklas is even taller than Kommissar and easily twice as wide as Beca.  
“Hello,” he says.  
“Hi,” Beca says.  
“Hi,” Chloe says. “I’m her girlfriend.”  
“She’s also co-captain of the Bellas,” Beca says. “So she’s Kommissar’s competition too.”  
“Oh, she is,” Kommissar says. “She certainly is.”  
Niklas looks from one of them to the other.  
“Right,” he says. “Well, may the best woman win. Tonight’s band are some kids down from Helsingør. Sound like they want to be a cross between Sisters of Mercy and ABBA. Want to come in?”  
“Can you dance to it?” Chloe says.  
“Sure,” Niklas says.  
“Then we want in,” Chloe says.  
So they go in. Like all clubs, it’s dimly lit and noisy. The band is playing, filling the place with heavy driving bass. It’s hard _not_ to dance to it.  
“My turn to pay,” Chloe shouts to them over the music. “Beca, you’re having a Bloody Mary, right?”  
Beca nods.  
“What are you having?” Chloe shouts at Kommissar. “Let me guess. Vodka, straight up?”  
Kommissar shakes her head.  
“Tequila Sunrise,” she shouts.  
Chloe nods and heads for the bar.  
Kommissar leans in so her mouth is right next to Beca’s ear.   
“Let’s find a table,” she says.  
Before Beca has a chance to answer, Kommissar has grabbed her by the arm and is leading her through the crowd. Normally, she’d be annoyed at being treated like that. Here, _everyone_ is much taller than she is, and she’s glad for the guidance. She sees Kommissar talk to someone, and moments later they’re passing through an opening in a velvet rope and are sitting down on a semi-circular couch with a round table in the middle. The open side of the couch directly faces the dance floor. There are some people dancing, but it’s far from crowded.  
“The waitress will let Chloe know where we are,” Kommissar says.  
She’s sitting very close to Beca.  
“Good,” Beca says. “She’d be upset if we got separated.”  
“And you?” Kommissar says.  
Beca frowns at her.  
“And me what?”  
“How would you feel if we happened to accidentally lose your girlfriend’s company tonight?”  
Beca looks away. Licks her suddenly dry lips.  
“I’d be upset, of course,” she says.  
There is a pause.  
“I see,” Kommissar says.  
Beca is afraid that maybe she does.  
“I have no idea why I’m so hung up on you,” Kommissar says. “I don’t actually know you, and you’re not really _that_ beautiful.”  
Beca turns back to her, a sinking feeling in her stomach.  
“I don’t know you either,” she says. “But you totally are.”  
Kommissar smiles.  
“Thank you, _Mäuschen_ ,” she says.  
Three glasses are put down on the table. Someone slides in next to Beca and puts an arm around her shoulders. Beca doesn’t have to look to know that it’s Chloe.  
“Hi, sweetie,” she says.  
“Hi,” Chloe says. “Your drink got a bit mixed up on the way here, Kommissar. It looked better right after the bartender made it.”  
Kommissar smiles.  
“That’s all right,” she says. “I actually want it for the taste, not the looks.”  
“Good,” Chloe says. “So what do you think of the band?”  
Beca hasn’t even thought about the band.  
“They show some promise,” Kommissar says. “Some.”  
“They’ve got decent rhythm,” Beca says. “You could dance to it.”  
A glint appears in Kommissar’s eyes.  
“I suppose you could,” she says.  
Beca is sure she knows what’s going to come next. She has no idea how she’s going to respond.  
“Chloe, do you want to dance?” Kommissar says.  
That was not what Beca expected. From Chloe’s expression, she didn’t either.  
“Um, sure,” Chloe says.  
Kommissar gets up, takes Chloe’s hands and drags her onto the dance floor. For every step, her movements change more and more from walk to dance. Chloe looks reluctant at first. But then she gives Beca a look. A long look. She closes her eyes for a moment, and Beca knows that she’s mentally picking up the rhythm of the music. And then she starts to dance.  
Chloe lives for music. She doesn’t just play it, or listen to it, she _lives_ it. For years, she’s deliberately failed to graduate just so she can keep making music with the Bellas. It’s not just something she does, it’s why she lives. She’s very good at it. And it quickly becomes obvious that she’s doing her best to give Beca the sexiest dance possible while keeping her clothes on. She doesn’t turn to Beca, oh no. She’s still dancing with Kommissar, while performing for Beca.  
It doesn’t take long for Kommissar to catch on. When she does, she smiles, winks at Beca and plays along. Which means that all of a sudden Beca has two world-class performers, both of them her former or current lovers, trying their damnedest to turn her on. And it’s working. Oh, how it’s working. An involuntary whimper escapes Beca.   
The dance floor is clearing around Chloe and Kommissar. It’s obvious to anyone watching that this is not just any two women dancing, that it’s something special. Even the band notices. The music starts following the dancers, who are following the music.  
Beca watches. She watches so hard that she doesn’t even _blink_. She can’t tell which one of them she wants more, and hasn’t that been her problem ever since they came to Copenhagen. Although at the moment the question, although still unanswered, is boiled down to pure desire, to pure physical _want_. Some vestige of decency prevents her from putting her hand down her pants and giving herself what she increasingly desperately needs. Behind her, she hears comments that she can only guess at the content of from the tone of voice. But that tone is somewhere between impressed and reverent. Which the show on the dance floor certainly deserves. It is… Beca has no idea what it is, except unbelievably hot.  
Kommissar slides her hand behind Chloe’s neck, pulls her in for a kiss.  
Chloe slaps her across the face, hard.  
They both stop dancing. Moments later, the music dies. The two women stare at each other. It’s suddenly very clear to everyone watching that they are not friends.  
“Thank you for the dinner,” Chloe says. “I think we’ll leave now.”  
She walks up to Beca.  
“Are you coming?” she says, voice low.  
Beca may only have been Chloe’s girlfriend for a few weeks, but she’s known her for four years. She can tell that Chloe doesn’t really expect her to say yes. That she expects her to go with Kommissar.  
Beca nods. She gets up from the couch. Chloe takes her hand.  
“Thank you,” she says.  
They start making their way through the crowd. Beca looks back at Kommissar. The other woman looks at her, face unreadable.

  
  


They don’t speak on the way back to the hotel. They stop every now and then and kiss, hard and desperate. In the elevator from the lobby to their floor, Chloe starts pulling at Beca’s clothes. Beca retaliates in kind. By blind luck, they make it into their room without being seen. Once the door has closed behind them, clothes start flying for real.  
They don’t make love. They don’t have sex. They _fuck_. It’s hard and rough and desperate, and so much unlike how they usually do it. They still don’t talk, all they’ve said since they left the restaurant are the occasional words that cannot be avoided. Chloe’s mouth and hands are all over Beca, as if she’s desperate to feel and taste her, as if Beca is the last oasis before a vast desert. Beca’s fingers are plunging into Chloe, again and again and again and again, trying to give her something she does not quite know what. Eventually, they both climax, one after the other. They collapse onto the bed in each other’s arms.  
“I’m sorry,” Chloe whispers in Beca’s ear.  
“Me too,” Beca whispers back.

  
  


The relentless Nordic summer light wakes Beca long before her alarm is due to go off. She’s kicked the blankets off while she was sleeping. It’s really not a problem, the room is almost too warm with the sunshine pouring in through the windows.  
Next to her, Chloe has done the same. She’s still sleeping, stark naked and flat on her back. The morning light reflects off the thin downy hair all over skin, turning it into a faint golden halo, closely following the gentle dancer’s curves of her body. Her strawberry hair lays spread across her white pillow. Her chest raises and falls slowly as she breathes. There is a bruise forming just below one of her nipples, where Beca bit down too hard last night.  
She’s one of the most beautiful sights Beca has ever seen.  
Beca likes waking up next to Chloe. Likes it a lot. Perennial loner since childhood, Beca has never felt like that before. It started long before they got together, during her first weird and hectic year at Barden. She and Chloe would sit in her bed, studying or making music or reading or something like that. Eventually it would get too late to continue, and without asking or even mentioning it, Chloe would lie down to sleep next to Beca. Beca never complained, and having Chloe there in the mornings always made her feel better. The first few times it happened, she was sure it was a prelude to Chloe making amorous advances on her. But that never happened, and Beca decided it was just another part of Chloe’s general disregard of personal boundaries.  
They haven’t talked about it, since the amorous part happened.  
If Beca loses these moments, she will miss them like a part of herself has been ripped out. Or so she thinks. She doesn’t know what the alternative might be. What would it be like to wake up next to Kommissar?  
Maybe it would be even better.  
Chloe opens her eyes. They look at each other for a long time.  
“Hey,” Chloe eventually says.  
“Hey yourself,” Beca says.  
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” Chloe says.  
“Well, I am.”  
Chloe smiles.  
“You are.”  
Beca moves the couple of handspans that separates her from Chloe, snuggling up as tight against her girlfriend as she can. Her head on Chloe’s shoulder, her arm reaching across Chloe’s chest and holding on to her.  
“We have to start rehearsals today,” she says.  
Chloe strokes Beca’s hair.  
“I’m sure it will work out for the best in the end,” she says.

  
  


Beca throws herself into rehearsals with all the energy she’s got. She welcomes the distraction. While she’s arranging choreography, while she’s re-mixing their tracks for the umpteenth time, while she’s rehearsing songs with the rest of the Bellas, then she’s not thinking about Chloe and Kommissar. She can put her feelings on hold and for a time get rid of the confusion and uncertainty.  
She’s never been so focused on their performance before. The difference is large enough that the others notice. When Stacie asks what’s up, she gets away with say it’s that it’s the world championship. Like, _the world_. When Fat Amy asks, she says it’s because the fate of the Bellas hangs in the balance.   
Cynthia Rose doesn’t ask what’s up. Doesn’t ask why she’s acting like she is.  
“How are you?” Cynthia Rose asks.  
“I’m good,” Beca’s mental autopilot says.  
“Really,” Cynthia Rose says. “Could have fooled me.”  
Mental autopilot isn’t prepared to deal with that.  
“Huh?” Beca says, actual consciousness surfacing from the depths of backbeat synchronization.  
“I said how are you and Chloe?” Cynthia Rose says.  
Beca frowns and tries to mentally replay the last few seconds.  
“No you didn’t,” she says.  
“Ok, I didn’t,” Cynthia Rose says. “But I am now.”  
They’re sitting on the edge of the stage the Bellas have been assigned for their rehearsals. It’s in an ugly 1970s concert hall some way away from the competition grounds, but it works well enough.  
“We’re good,” Beca lies.  
“Really,” Cynthia Rose says. “Because it looks like you’re treating each other like you were made from paper-thin glass or some other really fragile shit.”  
“Yeah, well…” Beca starts.  
“How did your dinner with the German chick go?” Cynthia Rose interrupts.  
Beca can feel herself wilt. She also realizes that there’s not much point in lying.  
“Her name really is Kommissar,” she says. “It was amazing and a disaster.”  
“Want to talk about it?”  
Beca makes a sound she can’t even tell herself if it’s a laugh or a sob.  
“Not really,” she says. “But I probably should.”  
“OK,” Cynthia Rose says. “So let’s talk.”  
Silence falls. From the other side of the stage comes the sound of Stacie and Fat Amy teaching Emily a dirty party game.  
“All right,” Cynthia Rose says after a while. “Let’s try this instead. I ask you questions, and you answer them as fast as you can. OK?”  
Beca nods. She tries to clear her mind, prepare herself to respond without thinking.  
“Are we in Copenhagen?” Cynthia Rose asks.  
“Yes,” Beca says.  
“Are we the Barden Bellas?”  
“Yes.”  
“Are you tall?”  
“No.”  
“Do you like cheese?”  
“Not really.”  
“Do you love Jesse?”  
“Maybe a little bit.”  
“Do you love Chloe?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you love Kommissar?”  
“Oh God yes,” Beca says.  
There is a noticeable pause.  
“Um, OK,” Cynthia Rose says. “Do you realize what you just said?”  
Beca sighs.  
“I’m afraid so,” she says.  
Cynthia Rose’s voice got softer.  
“Do you know how she feels about you?”  
Beca rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms.  
“The same,” she says. “Or worse.”  
“So you’ll both be miserable of you stay apart.”  
“Maybe,” Beca says. “I guess. Yes.”  
Cynthia Rose puts her hand on Beca’s knee.  
“Beca,” she says. “Why don’t you break up with Chloe and get together with German chick? You’ve only been together with Chloe for, what, a month? She’ll survive.”  
“Oh no,” Beca says. “That’s where you’re wrong. Yes, Chloe’s been my girlfriend for six weeks. But we’ve been _together_ for four years. Chloe’s been my _life_ for four years. Without her, I wouldn’t be in the Bellas. Without her, I wouldn’t know you. I’d have no life, no college degree, no friends, no… I don’t even know. When that crazy woman walked stark naked into my shower stall, my life took a sharp turn for the better. She’s been there ever since, next to me, almost every day for four years. She’s a huge part of my life. She’s part of _me_. I love her, and I can’t imagine her not being in my life. And she loves me, and if I dump her, she won’t be there any more. And I couldn’t stand that. So I can’t dump her. I just can’t.”  
“All right,” Cynthia Rose says.  
She looks taken aback at Beca’s sudden rant.  
“What about German chick?” she says.  
Beca groans.  
“Oh sweet _God_ I want her so bad!”  
“Could she fill Chloe’s part in your life? I mean, I know nobody can ever be exactly what Chloe is to you, but maybe someone else can be something different that fills the same need?”  
Beca looks at Cynthia Rose.  
“I have no idea,” she says. “None.”

  
  


Here is what Beca knows about Kommissar.  
The title is, for all practical purposes, her name.  
She lives in Hamburg.  
She likes women.  
She’s a vegetarian.  
She’s in her final year as co-leader of Das Sound Machine.  
She likes all kinds of music, as long as it’s well written and performed.  
When she was twelve, she was really into ABBA.  
One of the founding members of Kraftwerk once autographed her arm.  
She plays the flute and the piano.  
She likes to play around with drums, but claims not to be any good at it.  
She did ballet until she hit puberty, grew breasts and was told she’d never go anywhere in that world.  
She practices karate, and wants to try Capoeira.  
That, and nothing more.

  



	3. The Gravedigger

They practice like crazy for three days. Or, possibly, it’s only Beca who does the “crazy” part. She focuses on a capella and the Bellas from the moment she wakes up in the morning, until she falls into an exhausted sleep many hours later. Chloe is there next to her all the time, helping, supporting, making sure she eats, doing all the things she always does. Beca tries to show that she appreciates it, that she loves her. Show, because she has no idea how to say it.  
The constant effort is almost enough to keep her from thinking about Kommissar. Almost.  
Late on the third night, her phone chimes an incoming message. Beca is in bed, next to a sleeping Chloe, laptop perched on her knees with the screen brightness turned down as far as it’ll go. She picks the phone up and looks at the text.  
“Can I see you?” it says.  
It’s from an unknown number. An unknown number with a German prefix. It probably says something that Beca has looked up the German calling prefix, and remembers it.  
While she’s still looking at the message, another one arrives.  
“Please?” it says.  
“I’m down in the lobby,” a third one says.  
Beca stares at the phone. The messages cannot possibly be from anyone but Kommissar. Who wants to see her. In the middle of the night. All of a sudden, Beca’s stomach is full of Mothra-sized butterflies and she can feel the blood pounding through her veins.  
“OK,” she texts without having consciously decided to. “I’ll be down in a moment.”  
She closes her laptop and slides out of the bed, careful not to wake Chloe. She pulls on a t-shirt, panties, jeans and sneakers as fast as silence allows, and sneaks out the door. The elevator seems to take ages to get to her floor, and aeons to descend to the lobby. But finally the steel doors part, and she walks out into the large carpeted lobby. She looks around.  
The rooms is practically empty. There is a lone, sad guy behind the reception desk. He’s watching something on his phone and doesn’t as much as look up at Beca. From off the side comes noises from the smaller hotel bar. On one of the pretty but uncomfortable couches by the front glass wall a young blonde woman sits. Her hair is up in an untidy ponytail. She’s wearing a washed-out red sweatshirt, ripped blue jeans and formerly white sneakers.  
When Beca has almost reached her, Kommissar looks up. She’s looking tired, so tired that it tears at Beca’s heart. There are dark circles under her eyes, and she’s certainly not wearing any makeup.  
“ _Mäuschen_ ,” she says. “Thank you for…”  
That’s as far as she gets. Seeing her right there, in the oh so gorgeous flesh, cracks the last shred of Beca’s self control. Instead of stopping in front of Kommissar, she keeps moving, climbs onto the couch straddling Kommissar’s lap. She throws her arms around Kommissar’s neck, and kisses her.  
Kommissar kisses back, with desperate intensity.  
It feels unbelievably good. It’s like a glass of cold water after a long day of exercise. It’s like the first cup of coffee after a long abstinence. Like sunlight after a long rainy November. It’s like a gnawing pain going away.  
They part, panting from lack of air. Well, mostly lack of air. Their foreheads meet, leaning on each other.  
“Oh God,” Kommissar says.  
“Yeah,” Beca says.  
She sits up straight so she can see Kommissar properly.  
“You look tired,” she says. “Are you OK?”  
“I haven’t been sleeping very well,” Kommissar says.  
Her hands sneak in under the lower edge of Beca’s t-shirt, caress her skin as the move around her waist to stop at her lower back. Beca shivers from the delicious feeling.  
“I missed you,” she says.  
“And I you, _liebling Maus_ ,” Kommissar says.  
They sit in silence for a little while, simply relishing each others’ presence.  
“Come with me,” Kommissar eventually whispers. “Please. I need you.”  
“I don’t even know you,” Beca says.  
It’s not a refusal.  
“What do you want to know?” Kommissar says.  
Where to start?  
“Where do you live?” Beca asks. “I know it’s in Hamburg, but…”  
“I share a student’s flat with a girl called Heike,” Kommissar says. “We have a room each, and share kitchen and bathroom. It’s not the fanciest, but it’s close to where I study and it’s cheap.”  
Her hands have started slowly moving up Beca’s back.  
“What do you study?” Beca asks.  
“I started out with physics, then moved into computer science,” Kommissar says. “It’s not as weird as it sounds. I’m writing my master’s thesis on digital sound processing.”  
“That’s, like, the programs I use to mix music, isn’t it?” Beca says.  
“Yes, exactly,” Kommissar says. “For my thesis, I work with a company called ElektroWelle. They even ship a plugin I wrote with their main software. It’s kind of a testbed for my thesis project, on human voice codecs.”  
“So you make the kind of software I use,” Beca says. “That’s not intimidating at all.”  
“Everyone knows Mozart,” Kommissar says. “Nobody knows who made his piano.”  
“Flatterer.”  
The hands have reached the middle of Beca’s back.  
“No bra?” Kommissar says.  
“If I’d stopped to put one on, you would’ve had to wait another thirty seconds,” Beca says.  
Hands move forward, gently cradling Beca’s breasts.  
“Not a complaint,” Kommissar whispers.  
Beca moans. She leans forward, both to get more pressure and to reach to kiss Kommissar. Both things happen. One of Beca’s hands buries itself in Kommissar’s hair, the other moves down to her hip.  
“Hi girls!”  
Beca startles, a lot, as does Kommissar under her. The kiss breaks, but the various hands stay where they are. Beca knows that voice. Knows it very well.  
“Jesse?!” she says.  
It is indeed him. Standing there, just a few steps away. Looking at her making out with a woman who is not her girlfriend. Not that he knows she _has_ a girlfriend. Or even that she wants one. Oh God.  
“Yeah, hi,” he says. “You know you’re right by a huge glass wall, right? And totally lit up? So anyone who walks past outside can see you really well?”  
Beca blushes. She’s totally not thought of that.  
“Oh,” she says.  
Kommissar takes her hands out from under Beca’s t-shirt.  
“Also, not to pry or anything, but I thought you were with Chloe?” he says.  
Beca can just about feel her eyes go the size of saucers.  
“Wait,” she says. “You _know_ about that?”  
“Of course I know about that!” Jesse says. “You’ve even been living with her for, what, almost two months now? Although it would’ve been nice if you’d said something about that, it would.”  
Beca is struck speechless. There are no words. Her brain has stopped.  
“You are OK with this?” Kommissar asks.  
“Yes, of course,” Jesse says. “I mean, it’s the deal, right? She’s with Chloe, I’m with Benji, we pretend to be together so we don’t have to come out. Classic beard deal.”  
Beca just stares at him, not believing what she’s hearing.  
“I thought you had sex sometimes,” Kommissar says.  
Jesse smiles.  
“Well, I guess we’re both a bit bi,” he says. “And she’s hot, right?”  
“That she is,” Kommissar agrees.  
Beca gets up.  
“That’s what you thought we had?” she says. “That we were each others’ beards?”  
“Well, yeah,” he says. “I know we never _talked_ about it, but I have Benji and you obviously have Chloe, or is that _had_ Chloe now? Anyway, it was obvious.”  
It actually explains a lot. Why he never had a problem with her being cold and distant. With only having sex one or two times a year. Why he spent so much time with Benji. Why he never questioned that she spent so much time with Chloe.  
“Oh my God,” she says.  
Jesse frowns.  
“What?” he says.  
She makes a snap decision.  
“Nothing,” she says. “Er, I’m coming out. I’m out now. Totally lesbo.”  
He puts an arm around her shoulders and gives her a very dudebro kind of hug that nearly makes her fall over.  
“Good for you!” he says. “I should too. Yeah, I totally should.”  
He lets go of her.  
“So is it you and Chloe or you and…?”  
He raises his eyebrows at Kommissar.  
“Kommissar,” she says. “I know you are Jesse.”  
He looks questioningly at Beca.  
“I don’t know,” Beca says. “It’s… unclear.”  
“All right,” he says. “Good luck, whatever you do.”  
He heads for the elevators.  
“And girls?” he adds over his shoulder.  
“What?” Beca says.  
“Get a room, right?”  
Beca and Kommissar look at him in silence until the elevator doors close and he vanishes from sight.  
“Congratulations on coming out,” Kommissar says, voice dripping with sarcasm.  
“He thought I was together with Chloe the _whole time_?” Beca says. “For _four years_? The only serious long-term relationship I’ve ever had in my entire life was a complete sham from beginning to end?”  
She can’t process that right now. It’s too much.  
“The only serious long-term relationship I’ve ever had in my entire life,” she says, “was a complete sham from beginning to end, _and I didn’t notice_?”   
She sits down heavily next to Kommissar. Kommissar puts an arm around her.  
“ _Mäuschen_ ,” she says. “Are you OK?”  
Tears are building up in Beca’s eyes.  
“No,” she says, “I’m not. I thought he was a jerk for not noticing that I had dumped him and moved out, and instead it was I who was an idiot who didn’t realize that we never actually had a relationship at all.”  
“Yes you had,” Kommissar says. “It just wasn’t quite what you thought it was.”  
“Yeah, well,” Beca says. “Now you see how bad I am at this relationship stuff. I should just stay away from you, for your sake. Chloe at least knows what kind of loser I am.”  
“ _Liebling_ ,” Kommissar says, “he’s at least as big a loser as you are. As much as you didn’t notice he thought your relationship was fake, he didn’t notice that you thought it was real. Given that real relationships are much more common than fake ones, I would say it is worse for him to just assume you agreed it was fake, than for you to assume it was real.”  
Beca ponders that for a while. It seems to make sense.  
“I’ll have to chose between you and Chloe, won’t I?” she says. “I’ll have to talk about relationship stuff with both of you. Make sure that this time everyone involved actually agrees on who’s involved with who.”  
“I believe that would be good, yes.”  
Beca sinks down so she’s sitting more on her back than her ass. She looks up at Kommissar.  
“Can’t I just have both of you?” she says.  
“I don’t think so,” Kommissar says.  
“We don’t even live on the same continent,” Beca says.  
Kommissar looks away.  
“I know,” she says.  
“Could I move to Germany?”  
Kommissar give her a brief, surprised look. She licks her lips.  
“If you were married to a German citizen,” she says.  
“Oh,” Beca says.  
“I don’t know you very well either, little mouse,” Kommissar says.  
“Why did you come here?” Beca says. “I mean, to the hotel, tonight? I interrupted you before you could tell me.”  
“I just needed to see you,” Kommissar says. “To know if you were still talking to me after Chloe slapped me on the dance floor.”  
“I am,” Beca says. “Although I think Chloe doesn’t like you very much.”  
“If I was your girlfriend, and someone tried to steal you away, I wouldn’t like them very much either.”  
“Are you trying to steal me away?”  
“Absolutely.”  
Beca reaches up and touches Kommissar’s face.  
“Do you have someone waiting back home?” she says.  
Kommissar shakes her head.  
“I am quite single,” she says.  
Beca blinks.  
“Why?” she says. “I mean, seriously? Don’t Germans have any taste?”  
Kommissar laughs.  
“I’ve spent all my time on my studies and Das Sound Machine,” she says. “None left for relationships. I’ve satisfied myself with one-night hookups with hot women I happened to meet.”  
“Like me,” Beca says.  
“Like you,” Kommissar agrees. “Except I didn’t get nearly enough of you in only one night.”  
She runs a finger across Beca’s lips.  
“I don’t think I’d get enough of you in a lifetime,” she says.  
The stomach butterflies return to Beca. She puts her hand on Kommissar’s.  
“Where are you staying?” she asks. “It’s not here at the hotel, is it?”  
Kommissar shakes her head.  
“I’m staying with a cousin of mine,” she says. “He lives not that far from here.”  
They look deep into each others’ eyes.  
“And he’s got a really small flat where I sleep on the couch,” Kommissar says. “So no privacy.”  
“I share a room with Chloe,” Beca says.  
She feels bad for even thinking about going somewhere private with Kommissar. She _does_ love Chloe. She doesn’t want to cheat on her. Really. She just wants Kommissar so very, very much.  
“Chloe,” Kommissar says.  
She moves slightly away from Beca.  
“It would be wrong of you to be unfaithful,” Kommissar sighs.  
“It would,” Beca agrees.  
Kommissar quickly bends down and places the softest, lightest kiss on Beca’s lips. It sends lightning bolts careening across Beca’s entire body. She tries to lift her head, get more of it, but Kommissar pulls away and gets up from the couch.  
“You have my phone number,” she says.  
She hurries out the doors, not looking back. Beca keeps looking after her long after she’s vanished out of sight.

  
  


“I woke up last night and you weren’t there,” Chloe says during a break in rehearsals.  
She doesn’t sound accusing or hurt or anything like that, as far as Beca can tell. Beca could lie, say that she had problems sleeping and took a walk or something. Or she could try that being honest and talking about relationships thing.  
“Kommissar texted me in the middle of the night and wanted to talk,” she says. “I went down to the lobby to see her.”  
“I see,” Chloe says.  
Beca puts her hand on Chloe’s arm.  
“Chloe,” she says. “I’m trying to be really honest with you. Yes, I saw her. Yes, we kissed. But we were in the lobby of the hotel, out in public. Nothing unacceptable was going to happen there.”  
Chloe looks away.  
“So what did she want?” she says.  
“She said she wanted to know if I was still talking to her after what happened at the club,” Beca says. “And she just missed me.”  
“Is she upset that I hit her?” Chloe says.  
Beca shakes her head.  
“No,” she says. “She said that if she’d been in your place she’d have done the same.”  
Chloe snorts.  
“What else did you talk about?”  
Beca hesitates.  
“Well,” she says. “Jesse showed up.”  
She swallows.  
“While we were kissing.”  
“So did he join in?” Chloe says.  
“No!” Beca says, face twisting in distaste. “God, no!”  
“Just checking,” Chloe said. “So what did he say?”  
“He said he thought I was with you.”  
Chloe frowns.  
“I thought you hadn’t told him about us,” she says.  
“He thinks we’ve been together for the past four years.”  
Chloe’s frown deepens.  
“What?” she says.  
“He thinks he and I had some sort of beards-with-benefits deal going. He’s been with Benji for four years.”  
“Huh,” Chloe says. “I wonder who else thinks that.”  
“Chloe?” Beca says.  
Chloe looks at her.  
“Why weren’t we? Why did it take us so long?”  
“You were straight, as far as I knew,” Chloe said. “You were with Jesse.”  
“It took Kommissar one night to show me I wasn’t straight,” Beca says. “I’m pretty sure that if you at some point had made it clear that you weren’t just really cuddly and affectionate but wanted to have actual sex with me, you could have too.”  
“Or I could have scared you away forever,” Chloe whispers. “Kommissar could risk it, because she had nothing to lose!”  
Tears are welling up in her eyes.  
“I could have lost _you_ ,” she says. “It feels like I _am_ losing you.”  
Beca hugs Chloe as close as she can.  
“I’m being a bad girlfriend,” she says. “You should never have to feel like that.”  
Chloe hugs her back.  
“We should talk,” Beca says. “Sort things out.”  
“I suppose,” Chloe says.  
“Tonight,” Beca says. “We do that tonight.”  
She lets go of Chloe and turns to the rest of group. The much larger group than usual, with all the old Bellas members around. Quite a few of them are looking at her and Chloe, with varying degrees of approval. It seems that the girl who was captain when Aubrey did her famous regurgitation is particularly disapproving of Bellas dating each other. She can, in Beca’s considered opinion, suck it.  
“All right, Bellas,” Beca shouts. “Back to the grind. Only one more day of rehearsals before the big day.”

  
  


Beca needs to think. Ever since the riff-off and Kommissar, her life has been too hectic for her to stop and catch her breath. There’s been Chloe, and the Bellas, and the World Championship, and Kommissar _again_ and… She needs to stop and think, even if just for a little while.  
When the day’s rehearsals finally wind down, she sneaks out the back door without telling anyone. She picks a direction at random and just starts walking. The streets of Copenhagen are narrower and feel more crowded than she’s used to from home. There are fewer cars, although still a lot of them, and many more people on foot. The air is chilly, to her. The locals seem to think it’s really warm, since most of them are in t-shirts, short skirts and other thin summer clothing. The light is that weird never-ending twilight that paints everything a soft golden hue. The whole time she walks, she hears people talking in a language she doesn’t understand a single word of.  
Beca is a very long way from home.  
She walks past an open wrought-iron gate with something that looks like a park inside, and on an impulse she goes in. The place is grass-covered, with strategically placed trees providing a nearly unbroken cover above. There are paved walkways, and quite a lot of benches.  
It’s not until she sits down to rest her legs that she notices the headstones.  
She’s in a graveyard. There’s a graveyard smack in the middle of the city. With lots of buried dead people in it. She gets up and walks over to a nearby grave, one with a huge fancy headstone on it. So huge and fancy that the word headstone seems entirely inadequate. “Monument” would be more appropriate. It looks pretty old. It’s got moss on it. She looks around until she finds a plaque on it, a big copper thing easily two feet wide and three high. There’s a whole series of names on it, most of them with the same last name. The oldest one died, according to the plaque, in 1769. The most recent one in 1886.  
Beca stares at it. The grave she’s standing on is older than her _country_ is.   
“Kan jeg hjælpe dig?” someone says behind her.  
She spins around. There’s a woman there, maybe in her mid-forties, blonde and tanned. She’s wearing a tank top, shorts and trainers. She’s put down a wheelbarrow, empty but for some gardening tools.  
“Er, sorry,” Beca says. “I don’t speak Danish at all. Do you, like, speak any English?”  
“A little,” the woman says. “I just asked if I could help you.”  
Her English is accented, but perfectly understandable. Beca has heard worse at home.  
“Ah, no, thanks,” Beca says. “I’m just out walking trying to clear my mind. Needed to get away from things and think a bit.”  
“In a graveyard?” the woman says. “Are they dark thoughts, then?”  
“I didn’t know it was a graveyard when I walked in,” Beca says. “I thought it was a park. They’re just love trouble thoughts. Very boring, really. Unless you’re involved.”  
“It works as a park,” the woman says. “Lots of people walk their dogs here.”  
“I can see why.”  
“So the guy’s not treating you well, then?”  
It takes Beca a moment to follow the abrupt switch of subject.  
“Ah, no,” she says. “There are two girls. They both want me. I want both of them. And I can’t decide if I should stay with my girlfriend, or break up with her and go with the other one. Really old story.”  
The woman nods at the grave monument.  
“Not as old as death,” she says.  
“I guess not,” Beca says.  
“I’m Beca,” she adds.  
“Pleased to meet you,” the woman says. “I’m Trine.”  
There’s no way Beca is going to be able to either pronounce or spell that name. Treen-eh? Something like that.  
“Do you work here?” Beca says.  
Trine nods.  
“I take care of the graves,” she says. “And dig new ones.”  
“Do you like it?” Beca says.  
“I get to spend a lot of time outdoors,” Trine says. “Work with my hands. It’s nice this time of year. Less so in December.”  
“I guess you don’t really have to deal with the… dead people.”  
“Theoretically, no,” Trine says. “But this place was a pauper’s burial pit back in the 1760s. Every now and then we find stuff. Like this.”  
She sticks her hand in the wheelbarrow and takes out something that Beca at first thinks is a brown lump of something. It takes her a few seconds to realize what it really is.  
“Holy shit!” Beca says. “That’s a skull!”  
“Sure is,” Trine says.  
She holds it out at arm’s length and looks at it.  
“I don’t know enough to tell anything from it,” she says. “It goes to the archeologists tomorrow.”  
“Can I touch it?” Beca says.  
“Sure, why not?” Trine says. “It’s not like you’ll mess up anything valuable. We’ve found hundreds of these over the years.”  
Beca steps off the grave she’s been standing on, and takes the skull. It’s still got dirt on it. There is no jaw, obviously.  
“How old do you think it is?” she asks.  
“Almost certainly from the 18th century,” Trine says. “Anything younger than that would be in a coffin.”  
Beca can’t take her eyes off the piece of skeleton. It’s weird to think that this used to be a walking talking person, over two hundred years ago. Someone with hopes and dreams and loves and pains and all that. Someone who ate and drank and worked and maybe even sang.  
“Can you tell if it was a man or a woman?” Beca says.  
Trine shakes her head.  
“There’s no difference in the skull,” she says. “Would need to find a pelvic bone to tell.”  
Beca holds it up to the sky. It makes a stark contrast against the green leaves and fragments of blue behind it.  
“What did she die from?”  
Another shrug.  
“Starvation. Disease. Violence. Childbirth. There were a lot of ways to die back then.”  
Some day Beca herself will be a skull like this. Unless she’s cremated, in which case she’ll be even less. No matter if she stays with Chloe or goes with Kommissar, she’ll be just as dead. It’s a disturbing thought. She hands the skull back to Trine.  
“I think I’ll head back to my hotel,” she says.  
“Be safe,” Trine says. “Good luck with those girls.”  
“Thanks,” Beca says. “I’ll need that.”

  
  


The way back turns out to be longer than Beca expects. She stops on the way to have a sandwich. Which turns out to be a small piece of bread buried under a mountain of filling. Which is weird, but kind of nice. She could get a bus or a taxi, but the weather is still nice, it’s still light out and she still needs to think, so she keeps walking.  
When she walks through the hotel entrance, she sees Chloe and Kommissar in the lobby. Chloe is sitting in an armchair, arms crossed. Kommissar is standing in front of her, turned almost but not quite to her.  
“Hey, guys,” Beca says. “What are you doing here?”  
Both of their heads snap in Beca’s direction.  
“Beca!” Chloe says.  
She gets up from the armchair and rushes to Beca, catching her in a hard hug.  
“Are you OK, _Mäuschen_?” Kommissar asks.  
It’s clear from her stance that she wants to do exactly what Chloe is doing.  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Beca says. “Seriously, what’s up?”  
Chloe eases up enough on the hug that she can look Beca in the face.  
“You vanished after rehearsals,” she says. “When you’d been gone for over an hour, I called Kommissar to see if you were with her. When she didn’t have any idea either, we got worried.”  
“Oh,” Beca says.  
She hadn’t thought of that.  
“You’ve been gone for five hours, _liebling,_ ” Kommissar says. “We were just talking about contacting the police.”  
“Oh. Right,” Beca says. “Er, I’m sorry?”  
“Where were you?” Chloe asks.  
She lets go of Beca, steps back and throws a look at Kommissar. Kommissar hesitates briefly, then comes forward and embraces Beca. Beca isn’t sure how to react. Her body melts into the hug anyway.  
“You scared us,” Kommissar says.  
“I needed to clear my head,” Beca says. “I took a walk.”  
Kommissar lets go of her, takes a few quick steps back and crosses her arms, as if to force them to stay in place.  
Beca looks from Chloe to Kommissar and back again.  
“You’re both here,” she says. “At the same time.”  
“We both got scared,” Chloe says.  
“We quite agree that you should be safe, sound and happy,” Kommissar says.  
Beca’s throat suddenly feels a bit tight.  
“I want both of you to be that too,” she says.  
Chloe and Kommissar look at each other.  
“Sometimes you can’t have what you want,” Chloe says, still looking at Kommissar.  
She takes half a step closer to Beca. Kommissar smiles at Chloe. It’s not a very nice smile.  
“Woah, hold on!” Beca says. “What are you guys doing?”  
It looks kind of like they’re about to start fighting. As if they’d had a truce, and now that Beca is back it’s broken.  
Chloe looks away.  
“It’s late,” she says. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”  
Kommissar turns to Beca and gives her a look that’s nothing short of pleading, but she says nothing.  
“Yeah,” Beca says. “Need to get some solid sleep tonight. Tomorrow’s competition day.”  
The rivals both look surprised. Oh my God, passes through Beca’s mind. They _forgot_. They totally forgot why they’re here in the first place.  
“Yes, of course,” Kommissar says. “I should get back to my own bed.”  
“Good idea,” Chloe says.  
Kommissar bites her lip. She shakes her head a little.  
“Sleep well, little mouse,” she says.  
She turns and heads for the doors, walking fast.  
Chloe heads for the elevators.  
An impulse strikes Beca.  
“Kommissar!” she shouts.  
The German woman stops instantly, turns around. Beca hears Chloe do more or less the same behind her.  
“Tomorrow?” Beca says.  
She looks slowly and deliberately from Kommissar to Chloe and back again.  
“May the best woman win,” she says.

  



	4. Chloe's Fears

Beca and Chloe ride the elevator up to their floor in silence. They walk down the corridor without saying anything. Chloe unlocks the door, and holds it open for Beca before she enters herself. It’s late enough that a heavy dusk has replaced the near-eternal daylight. Outside the window, Copenhagen glitters and shines until it’s taken over by the dark waters of Øresund. The sky is still entirely free from clouds, and Beca thinks she can see lights in the far distance that could be Malmö over in Sweden. She feels awake. Alert. Caught in a moment of transition. She turns to face Chloe across the width of the room.  
“Are you OK?” she says.  
Chloe is leaning against the closed door to the corridor.  
“I guess,” she says.  
Frustration rises in Beca.  
“No,” she says. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that now.”  
“Don’t do what?” Chloe says.  
“Don’t hide from me. Don’t shut me out. Not _now_.”  
There’s a pain in her hands, and she realizes she’s clenched them shut. She forces her fingers to relax.  
“ _Talk_ to me, Chloe,” she says. “ _Please_. Are you OK?”  
Chloe shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes.  
“No,” she says. “I’m not OK.”  
“Is it because of Kommissar?”  
“No,” Chloe says. “Yes. Not… Yes, but that’s just a part.”  
Beca frowns. She thought she knew where the conversation was headed, but this wasn’t it.  
“I don’t understand,” she says.  
“Tomorrow it all ends,” Chloe says.  
Tears are slowly trickling down her cheeks.  
“You think I’m going to…,” Beca says, but Chloe interrupts her.  
“Not just you,” she says. “Tomorrow it _all_ ends.”  
Beca must still look confused, because Chloe make a frustrated sound and continues.  
“The Bellas, our Bellas, tomorrow is our last performance. Ever. We’ve all graduated. Now we move on, out of Barden. We have to find new ways to make a living. New places to live. New friends. New hobbies. New everything. Everything that’s been my life for the past seven years, it ends tomorrow. One way or another. And if I lose you so soon after I really got you, that will hurt more than I can imagine, but it will also be right, because why would I get to keep that one thing when I’m losing everything else?”  
The words cut into Beca’s heart. She hurries over to Chloe, puts her arms around her.  
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Oh, sweetie.”  
Chloe hugs her back, and Beca can feel her tense as she cries.  
“This is why you never wanted to talk about what happens after graduation,” Beca says. “Why you never wanted to make plans.”  
Chloe, who deliberately failed a silly course three years in a row just so she could stay. Who finally passed it when Beca, Cynthia Rose, Fat Amy, Stacie, Lily and the rest of them were about to graduate, so there was no point for her to stay any longer. Chloe, who didn’t want to leave. Who didn’t want change. Or, rather, who was deathly afraid of losing things. So afraid that for years, she slept next to a girl she loved night after night without saying anything, for no matter how much she stood to gain if she risked admitting her feelings, the fear for what would happen if it went bad was too strong.  
Beca pulls gently at Chloe.  
“Come,” she says. “Let’s move over to the bed, OK?”  
They get to the bed without letting go of each other, and fall onto it more than lie down. Beca holds on to her, strokes her, tries whatever she can think of to bring comfort.  
“Back at Aubrey’s camp,” she says. “When you joked about becoming a stripper, that wasn’t really a joke, was it? You’re afraid that’s exactly what you’ll have to do.”  
She feels Chloe nod.  
“I can’t _do_ anything,” she says. “I can’t sing very well, since the nodes. I never got the knack for creating choreography, or making music. I’m a decent dancer, but that’s about it. All I ever really did for the Bellas was help the rest of you shine, and just barely keep up with you when you did. I took what Aubrey or you decided on and helped the rest actually do it. That’s all.”  
She must’ve felt like this for years. That she was inferior. Just tagging along. Not contributing anything of value.  
“Chloe?” Beca says.  
“Yes?” Chloe says.  
“That’s called directing.”  
Chloe moves her head until she can look at Beca.  
“What?” she says.  
“What you just described you can do, and do really well,” Beca says. “Taking someone else’s music or choreography and getting a bunch of musicians or dancers to perform it? That’s what a director does.”  
There is a long silence.  
“Huh,” Chloe finally says.  
“Did you always feel like this?” Beca says. “Like you were some sort of dead weight in the Bellas?”  
“Yes,” Chloe says.  
“Oh God,” Beca says. “We really let you down. I really let you down.”  
“I was just happy you let me stay,” Chloe says.  
The really scary thing, to Beca, is that she obviously means it. That even after almost four years, Chloe was happy just because she hadn’t been thrown out. She kept replaying her memories of Chloe, all the things she’d said and done, and with hindsight she could see how much of what made Chloe extraordinary might have been born out of a silent desperation. How she could dare to walk into another girl’s shower stall, because from her point of view she was going to lose it all at any moment anyway.  
It also suddenly occurs to Beca that everything she knows about Chloe starts at Barden. She’s heard stories of what Chloe and Aubrey did before Beca came to Barden. She’s never heard as much as a word about what Chloe did before _she_ came to Barden. She’s never heard anything about Chloe’s parents. She has no idea if Chloe has any siblings. Or where she grew up. Where she went to school. Anything.  
She wonders how on Earth she _missed_ that for four years.  
“Chloe?” she says.  
“Yes?”  
“Where did you grow up?”  
Chloe tenses up so fast that it’s like she suddenly turned to stone.  
“Never mind,” Beca says, as fast as she can get it out. “Forget I asked.”  
Slowly, by fits and starts, Chloe relaxes again.  
“Whatever happens tomorrow,” Beca says, tentatively. “Here are a few things that aren’t in any doubt at all.”  
She turns a little, hugs Chloe closer.  
“All of the Bellas love you like a mom,” she says. “You’ve cared for us for years, and we love you for it. I’m going to tell Fat Amy, Cynthia Rose and Stacie particularly that you need some of that love back now, and if they don’t provide it I’ll sic Lily on them.”  
“I like Lily,” Chloe says.  
“I know, sweetie,” Beca says. “You like everyone.”  
“No,” Chloe says. “Not everyone.”  
She says it with a tone of voice that has an abyss of darkness waiting below it.  
“Anyway,” Beca says. “You’re really good at what you do. Which is helping others perform at their peak. Call it directing, teaching or coaching, you’re great at it. And that’s something people will pay good money for. You were co-captain of the best a capella group in the United States for four years, which includes three national championship titles and possibly one international one. Whether you believe it yourself or not, you’re really good at this. You’ll have no problems getting work.”  
“Hm,” Chloe says. “Maybe. We’ll see.”  
“Third, you’re just plain wonderful,” Beca says. “You make people happy just by being around them. You’re gorgeous, you’re nice, you’re helpful and just generally a fantastic person to be around. Even if you lose the Bellas, which you won’t, because we won’t let that happen, you still wouldn’t have any problems getting new friends. You’re just too… you.”  
“Now you’re just being silly,” Chloe says.  
“No, love,” Beca says. “I’m not. I’m just telling the truth. And a part of that is that I love you.”  
They don’t say anything more. They lie there, wrapped around each other, until they fall asleep.

  
  


Beca wakes up at four in the morning. Again, the sun is shining far too brightly through the window. She’s tired, and totally fully awake. She closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep, but there’s no point. She may as well get up and do something useful. Carefully, she extracts herself from Chloe and gets out of the bed. She sits on the floor, out of the direct sunshine, and digs out her laptop. She puts on her headphones and loads up the base music for the Bellas’ final number. It’s a complicated one, with lots more voices than she usually has to work with. It would’ve been nearly impossible to arrange if she hadn’t had a new plugin for her software that helps her pick apart and analyze the different voices.  
She suddenly stops with her hand hovering over the trackpad.  
_Voice analysis plugin_.  
Slowly, as if it might be poisonous, she picks out the interface panel for the plugin in question and clicks the “About…” button. Another window pops up. It has some text in it, and a picture. The picture shows a blonde woman Beca knows all too well. In the picture, she’s wearing a Das Sound Machine t-shirt. Under the picture it says “Developer: Kommissar Meyer”.  
Beca looks from the picture of Kommissar to the real-life sleeping Chloe.  
She looks down from Chloe to the picture again.  
Then she puts her face in her hands and groans.

  
  


Competition day dawns. The Bellas and all the other competitors make their way to the actual competition space. When they get there, it looks like a huge grass field with a lot of temporary structures on it. It’s going to fill up with lights and people later on, Beca knows, but until that happens the ambience is kind of ghost town.  
A ghost town with rather a lot of unusually solid ghosts building stuff, arranging technical things, setting up stands and that sort of thing.  
“Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?” Beca says to Cynthia Rose as their unusually large group gets off the bus.  
“Sure,” Cynthia Rose says. “What’s up?”  
“Chloe,” Beca says. “She’s in a really bad place emotionally. And no, it’s not because of me and Kommissar. Or at least it’s just little bit about that.”  
“OK,” Cynthia Rose. “I can see she’s not feeling very well, but what do you want me to do about it?”  
“Not let her be alone,” Beca says. “If you could talk to Fat Amy and Stacie and make sure that at least one of you is with her at all times, that would be good. She’s afraid of being left alone when all this is over.”  
“Are you going to stay with her?” Cynthia Rose says.  
She doesn’t specify if she means during the competition or after.  
“I’ll try to stay with her as much as possible today,” Beca says. “But I’ve got a lot of things to arrange, and also it might not help as much as you’d think. We’re having a… snag.”  
Cynthia Rose gives her a long, probing look.  
“We’ll keep her company,” she says. “But you have to promise you’ll fix that snag.”  
“I’m not sure I _can_ fix it,” Beca says. “But I promise I’ll try my best.”  
“I guess that’ll have to be good enough,” Cynthia Rose says.  
“Thanks,” Beca says. “I really appreciate that.”  
She turns to the crowd. Because it is a crowd. When she dropped the idea to bring on as many old Bellas as they could, she had no idea it’d be this many. She’s wondering how they’ll even fit them all on the stage. She’s sure that if they can just get them all up there, they’ll perform fine. They are, after all, Bellas.  
“OK, Bellas, listen up!” she shouts.  
It takes a while, but eventually all of them are turned in her direction.  
“So this is it,” she shouts.  
She’s not used to talking to crowds this large. At least not outdoors and without any PA equipment.  
“This is do or die for the Barden Bellas. Today, we win or we vanish forever. So we’re going to win, right?”  
There’s a resounding yes from the massed Bellas.  
“We have a plan,” Beca shouts. “We have the skill. Now all we have to do is to put it out there!”  
There’s a cheer.  
“The stage is over there,” she shouts. “We have a few hours to prepare and get things perfect. So let’s get to it! Old Bellas, listen to instructions from present Bellas, please. Present Bellas, listen to Chloe and Fat Amy for now, I need to go deal with some administrative stuff.”  
She looks at them for a moment, trying to see if they’ve heard her properly. Then she claps her hands and starts walking forward.  
“Get to it, aca-bitches!” she shouts.  
They all get moving, mostly in the general direction of the stages. Which is OK, they still have most of the day to go before things get serious. Or at least the a capella competition sort of serious. On the personal level, it already is serious. She closes her eyes and takes a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm herself.  
“What administrative stuff?” Chloe says from right next to her.  
She nearly jumps out of her skin from surprise. She opens her eyes and sees Chloe and Fat Amy standing right in front of her.  
“Oh, I just want to talk to the administration and make sure they’re OK with us adding so many people,” Beca says. “If there’s a problem, we want to know that as soon as possible.”  
“Oh,” Chloe says. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”  
“You can deal with starting practice, right?” Beca says. “I said Fat Amy too just so you won’t have to deal with everything yourself.”  
“Yeah, that’s good,” Fat Amy says. “If any of the old bitches get uppity, I’ll rip their plastic tits off.”  
“Er, yeah,” Beca says, “please don’t do that.”  
“All right,” Amy says. “But it would make for show people won’t forget in a hurry.”  
“We’ll be fine,” Chloe says.  
“Good,” Beca says.  
She gives Chloe the firmest hug she can manage, and she’s relieved to feel that Chloe hugs her back just as strongly.  
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, OK?” she says.  
Chloe nods.

  
  


Beca has no intention of talking to the competition administration. She already did that, and she has their permission to include all the old Bellas in their performance. On paper, and several copies. Just in case. Leaving something like that for the final day would be crazy irresponsible. No, she is after something else entirely. She’s after a silent spot and a power outlet. She’s got her computer, her phone, chargers for them both, a couple of converters from proper power outlets to weird-ass Danish ones, and she’s going to use it all.

  
  


When Beca returns to the Bellas, she goes straight into too-busy-to-think mode. It’s the world championships, and she has four times as many Bellas as usual to wrangle. Most of them are theoretically adults, but it’s not that easy to tell from the way they behave. They argue, they complain, they drag up old feuds from the 20th century.   
“ _These_ are the old Bellas?” Beca lets slip at one point.  
“Well,” Stacie, who happens to hear it, says. “Maybe the ones who actually, you know, _grew up_ have better things to do than be here.”  
“I can believe that,” Beca says. “I really can.”  
The good side of it is that she’s far too busy to worry. About anything. Not their performance. Not Chloe. Not Kommissar. Not herself. Not the future of the Bellas. It’s just one long string of urgent problems, one on the tail of the other. Until, suddenly, the main stage lights go on and a ridiculously enthusiastic voice starts introducing the competition.  
“Wait, what?” Beca says. “What are they doing?”  
“Er, they’re starting the competition,” Fat Amy says. “You know, the one we came here to win?”  
“Now?” Beca says. “But we’re not ready!”  
“Well,” Cynthia Rose says. “Sucks to be us, then.”  
“We’re ready enough,” Chloe says. “We’re going to beat those German creeps.”  
The first group enters the stage. They’re from… somewhere that likes wearing large flowing robes. Beca hasn’t paid attention to the list of competitors at all, except that the Bellas are last. They’re last, and Das Sound Machine is right before them.  
“Oh God,” Beca says. “I need to clear my mind. I’m taking a short walk.”  
Chloe looks at her.  
“Short?” she says.  
“Just across the field to the concession stand, OK?” Beca says. “You’d be able to see me the whole way if the Danes weren’t so stupid tall.”  
“Just be back in time for our performance, OK?” Chloe says. “We’ll be here.”  
“And be careful with the eating,” Fat Amy says. “We don’t want you to do an Aubrey. That’d be really embarrassing.”  
“And that, my friends, comes from the woman who mooned the president,” Cynthia Rose says.  
“Ah, he liked it,” Fat Amy says. “In secret.”  
“I’ll be careful,” Beca says. “And I’ll be back in ten minutes, tops. Don’t worry.”  
She leaves before they can say anything more. Walks down the little staircase from the room where they’re waiting their turn, out among the crowd. Everyone’s busy watching the main stage, so Beca passes entirely unseen on her way over to the food and drink stand.  
Almost entirely unseen.  
“ _Mäuschen_.”  
She turns around.  
“Kommissar,” she says.  
Kommissar is in her stage getup. The leather pants and the black sports bra and the see-through top. Beca may let out a small frustrated whimper, but if so she’s never going to admit it to anyone.  
“Are you well?” Kommissar says.  
“As much as I can be,” Beca says. “You?”  
“Let’s not go into that,” Kommissar says.  
Beca doesn’t know what to say.  
“It’s good to see you,” she says.  
Kommissar smiles.  
“Likewise,” she says. “Look…”  
“Yes?” Beca says.  
Somehow they’ve ended up with only an inch separating them.  
“After the competition,” Kommissar says. “However it goes…”  
She hesitates.  
“I’m sure you and your girlfriend have plans with the Bellas, but if it’s at all possible I’d like to talk to you then. Just a little.”  
“Oh, sure,” Beca says, making a dismissive gesture. “Totally. No problem at all.”  
“Good,” Kommissar says. “Good. I’ll see you after, then.”  
Beca takes her hand.  
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she says.  
Their eyes are locked on each other.  
“I need to get back to DSM,” Kommissar says, but she doesn’t move.  
“I should get back to the Bellas,” Beca says.  
She gets up on her toes and places a tender kiss on Kommissar’s lips. Kommissar responds, much more passionately. Enough that the people around them are starting to take notice. Beca backs down, very reluctantly.  
“See you then,” she says.  
She hurries away before she can change her mind. It’s not until she’s walking up the staircase to the Bellas waiting area that it occurs to her that she didn’t even get to the concession stand. Chloe smiles at her when she enters the room.  
“Did your walk help?” she says.  
Beca gives a tense smile.  
“Not really,” she says.  
“Poor you,” Chloe says.  
She puts her arms around Beca and kisses her, deeply and passionately. Beca hesitates for a fraction of a second before kissing her back. It feels weird doing it so soon after having kissed Kommissar, but it’s Chloe. She’ll never not want to kiss Chloe. They keep at it until Fat Amy starts making coughing noises.  
“How’s the competition?” Beca asks, still in Chloe’s arms.  
“Pathetic,” Stacie says. “But we already knew the only real competition is DSM.”  
“So let’s watch and wait,” Chloe says.  
She sits down on a hard chair and pulls Beca down on her lap.

  
  


They perform.  
They win.

  
  


Moments after the Bellas are announced as the winners, the competition grounds turn into one huge party. Pre-recorded music alternates with just for the heck of it performances from the competitors. The huge space in front of the main stage becomes a dance floor. A DJ setup that nearly makes Beca drool gets set up at one end of the main stage, and the carefully controlled lighting turns into a light show based on the music. It’s like one enormous open-air night club. Which Beca loves, normally, and right now she’s also high on being a world champion a cappella singer, but she has something to do.  
“Hey,” she says, putting her arm around Chloe’s waist, once she finds her.  
“Hey you,” Chloe says.  
She puts her arm around Beca’s shoulders and leans her head on Beca’s.  
“How are you?” Beca says.  
“I’m OK,” Chloe says. “We won, right?”  
They’re standing right in front of the main stage, with a bunch of other Bellas. On the stage are a bunch of guys combining voices and didgeridoos. Fat Amy are booing and jeering, since the guys are apparently from the wrong part of Australia. It’s all very noisy.  
“Can we go somewhere where we can talk?” Beca says. “Just briefly.”  
She can feel Chloe sag a little.  
“Sure,” Chloe says.  
They move back, up to where they were waiting earlier. It’s not exactly quiet, but the music is far enough away that it’s possible to talk without shouting. It’s also where Beca stashed her backpack. She digs out a large envelope from the backpack, and hands it to Chloe.  
“Here,” she says.  
Chloe looks at it as if it might be poisonous.  
“What’s this?” she says.  
“A job and a place to live,” Beca says. “If you want them.”  
Chloe frowns.  
“What?”  
“What you told me,” Beca says, trying to find the words to explain properly. “How you’re afraid of what’s going to happen now. How you’ve never planned for what happens now. How every time I’ve tried to figure out what happens to _us_ now, you’ve changed the subject.”  
She draws breath.  
“What’s in that envelope is a safety net,” she says. “There’s an offer of a job, and a lease on a flat. Both are only waiting for your signature. The job is as dance coach at a fitness center. I _know_ you can do that, you’ve done it for the Bellas for the past seven years. The flat is a studio. It’s furnished. It’s really nice, and really cheap. It’s cheap because it’s on the fifth floor and has no lift. It’s also only a block away from Stacie and Cynthia Rose’s new place, and they’ve promised to make sure you won’t be alone.”  
Beca draws breath.  
“So whatever happens, if you just sign those papers you’ll have a decent life, OK?”  
Chloe opens the envelope. She takes out the papers and looks them over for what feels to Beca like an eternity. Then she shoves them back in.  
“You’re nowhere in this,” she says.  
“No, I’m not,” Beca says. “That’s part of the point.”  
She’s silent for a moment, trying to find the words.  
“The thing is,” she tries. “If you don’t have a safe base, you can’t _choose_ to be with me. I don’t want you to be with me because your only other option is being alone and starving. I want you to be with me because you want to be with me. So I have to give you decent alternative to being with me.”  
Chloe is looking at her with an unreadable expression.  
“Do you see what I’m saying?” Beca says. “Please say that you understand.”  
Chloe looks at the envelope.  
“How did you arrange this?” she says.  
Beca shakes her head.  
“Er, the fitness center is owned by Lily’s dad,” she says. “So, yeah, it _might_ be a front for a weird genocidal cult or something. But it looks legit. The flat is a place Cynthia Rose looked at before she and Stacie decided to share. It is a nice place, and she figured the stairs would be nice cardio. The landlord has a hard time getting it rented, since, well, five floors and no lift.”  
Chloe takes the papers out again. She reads them, carefully. Beca waits, nervously chewing on her lip.  
“So what are your plans?” Chloe asks when she’s done reading.  
“That’s… another part,” Beca says. “I don’t know.”  
“You don’t know?” Chloe says. “You haven’t planned at all?”  
“Oh, I have,” Beca says. “But not very carefully, or seriously, because I’m me.”  
“So what are you plans?”  
Beca hesitates.  
“You’re not going to like them,” she says.  
“You don’t know that.”  
“My boss,” Beca says. “At the internship. He actually likes what I’ve done.”  
“Of course he does,” Chloe says. “You’re amazing.”  
“…So he’s trying to get me a position in either New York or Los Angeles.”  
“Oh,” Chloe says.  
“We won’t know how it goes for a while,” Beca says. “So I’m planning to stay in my room at Barden until things gets cleared up. Or the summer ends. Whichever comes first.”  
“I hope it’s New York,” Chloe says. “I never really liked Los Angeles.”  
“Excuse me?”  
“I’m coming with you,” Chloe says. “Unless you don’t want me to?”  
“Of course I want you to,” Beca says automatically. “It’s just…”  
“They’ve got fitness centers in New York too,” Chloe says. “And I bet they too have dance coaches.”  
“Nothing’s sure,” Beca says. “At best, something happens in a month or two.”  
“You’re right,” Chloe says. “This room, is it big enough for the both of us?”  
“Er, I guess,” Beca says.  
“Have you got a pen?”  
Beca gets one out of her backpack. She watches as Chloe signs the papers.  
“There,” she says. “If you stay with me instead of at the dorm you can save up money for the move.”  
Beca doesn’t know what to say. She didn’t have any clear idea how Chloe would react to her offers, she now realizes. At some level, she had expected to get them thrown back in her face. This quiet acceptance she doesn’t really know what to do with.  
“Er, OK,” she says. “We can do that.”  
“Good,” Chloe says. “It’s settled, then. Let’s go back to the others, I want to party.”  
“You go ahead,” Beca says. “I want to pack away the papers and stuff. I’ll be along in a minute.”  
“Sure,” Chloe says.  
They kiss. Beca slides her hands under Chloe’s shirt, so she can feel the warmth of her skin. She loves touching Chloe, loves holding her, loves kissing her. Loves doing a lot more than that, but this is no time for that.  
“See you soon,” Chloe breathes.  
“Uh-hu,” Beca says, still processing the sensations.  
Chloe does an elegant, almost dance-like turn, and leaves. Beca pulls up a chair and sits down.  
What is she doing?  
She should be happy that things seem to be working out with Chloe, but instead she feels mildly disappointed. Almost frustrated. As if she doesn’t really want it to work out. As if she secretly wants an excuse to leave.  
As if she secretly wants someone else. Someone it’s ridiculous that she’s feeling this strongly for. They’ve only met a handful of times, spent only hours together. They don’t know each other at all. If they lived anywhere close to each other, they could go out. Could spend a lot more time getting to know each other. Find out if they want to spend their lives together or not. But they don’t even live on the same continent. They’re both at the end of their careers in collegiate a cappella. Most likely after they leave Copenhagen, they’ll never see each other again.  
The realization settles like a lead weight in Beca’s stomach. Following in its track comes the further realization that what she’s going to do is to settle for Chloe. She’s going to go home to Atlanta with Chloe, share a home with her, try to work on her career and if it works out Chloe will come with her wherever she goes. All the while knowing that for her, Chloe is second best. The one she’s with because she can’t have the one she really wants.  
She disgusts herself.  
She gets up from the chair and takes her phone out. She places the papers Chloe signed neatly on the table and takes clear, legible pictures of them, which she then email to their respective recipients. There. It’s done. Irrevocable. Chloe has a job and a flat. A life. She’ll be fine. They’ll be fine. She slides the originals into her backpack, closes it up and puts it under the table. This once, she’ll trust to luck that it doesn’t get stolen. She turns out the lights and leaves.

  



	5. Job Offer

Outside, the crowd hasn’t shrunk the least. It’s still a huge mass of people dancing and partying. Beca makes her away toward the main stage and, hopefully, the Bellas. On the stage, she sees when she gets close enough, are Das Sound Machine. One of them is in the DJ booth playing old German industrial music, while the rest of the group does an impressively good all-vocal overlay on it.  
When she gets even closer, she notices that Kommissar is not with her group on stage. She frowns and looks again, and this time she does see her. She’s standing at the side of the stage, almost invisible outside the spotlights. She’s leaning on a speaker stack, arms crossed. Her face is cold and impassive.  
Beca does not to much decide to go to that side of the stage as realize that her legs has already started moving in that direction. She flashes her performer’s backstage pass at the guards, and climbs the stairs onto the stage. The music is very loud up here. Kommissar doesn’t hear her approach, and trying to talk is pointless. She puts her hand on Kommissar’s arm. Kommissar whips her head around to see what is disturbing her, with a terrifying expression. Beca is just about to step back when the expression changes to a huge smile. Before she quite knows what’s happening, she finds herself pushed up against the vibrating mass of a loudspeaker taller than she is, being passionately kissed. Kommissar’s hands are ranging all over her. Beca moans and does the same thing right back. She even spreads her legs a little, just to make sure Kommissar understands that her ministrations are very welcome. Kommissar drags a finger along the zipper of Beca’s pants, and for a few moments Beca thinks she’s about to be fucked right there on the main stage. In front of thousands of people, even if they can’t see her and Kommissar out there in the darkness. But before it goes any further, Kommissar pulls back. Beca looks up at her, surprised and frustrated. Kommissar is clearly panting, and her nipples are standing out clearly under her sports bra. She points off to the side. Beca nods, and they hurry away.

  
  


“I thought you weren’t coming,” Kommissar says when they’ve reached the relative quiet behind the stage.  
“Well, you stopped and dragged me off to here,” Beca says.  
Kommissar laughs.  
“Not that kind of coming, _Mäuschen_.”  
“Oh,” Beca says. “I knew that.”  
The night air is cold against her bare arms. She crosses them, trying to keep warm. They’re standing among cables and random large boxes. The ground is worn-down muddy grass. Out of the lights, it’s quite dark. Not nearly as dark as it’d be at home, but still.  
“You’re cold,” Kommissar says.  
“A bit,” Beca admits. “Aren’t you?”  
Kommissar isn’t wearing any more than Beca, even if it looks totally different.  
“I’m too distracted to tell,” Kommissar smiles at her. “The trailer DSM got to change in is near, we could go there. It should be empty.”  
“Sure,” Beca says.  
“This way,” Kommissar says.  
She takes Beca’s hand and leads the way.  
“When are you going home?” Beca asks.  
“Mid-afternoon tomorrow,” Kommissar says. “You?”  
“About the same.”  
“So we will be at the airport at the same time again.”  
Her smile has gone away.  
“I’m quitting competitive a cappella after this,” Beca says.  
“Me also,” Kommissar says.  
“So after tomorrow afternoon, we will probably never see each other again.”  
Please protest, Beca thinks. Please tell me I’m wrong.  
“Yes,” Kommissar says. “Unless we make it happen.”  
They’ve reached a large trailer. Kommissar opens the door and goes inside. Beca follows. The inside looks like the large dressing room it is. There are makeup tables, clothes racks, and lots of clothes and things strewn everywhere.  
“I thought a bunch of Germans would be more organized,” Beca says.  
“I think they should be,” Kommissar says. “But on this, they do not obey me.”  
She clears half a couch by the simple expedient of pushing everything on it to the floor. She sits down, arms stretched out along the back of the couch and legs firmly together and stretched out. She tilts her head a little and looks at Beca. Beca isn’t slow to take the hint. She climbs up on Kommissar’s lap, straddling her thighs and facing her. She puts her hands on Kommissar’s shoulders and places a quick kiss on her lips.  
“Hi there,” she says.  
Kommissar’s arms goes around Beca.  
“Much as I would love to do more entertaining things,” she says. “We have little time, and there are things I want to say before we have to part.”  
Beca lets out a theatrical sigh.  
“If we must,” she says.  
“It might give us more time,” Kommissar says.  
Beca sits up straight.  
“Proceed,” she says.  
“You remember I said I work with a company that makes digital music software? Doing voice stuff?”  
“Yes,” Beca says. “I have your plugin. It’s very useful.”  
“Thank you,” Kommissar says. “Anyway, we were planning to use my winning the a cappella world championship in a PR campaign.”  
“Confident much?” Beca says.  
“Only realistic,” Kommissar says. “If you guys hadn’t shown up, we wouldn’t have had any serious competition.”  
“I’ll give you that,” Beca says. “So your plan didn’t work out.”  
“I may work out even better than I thought,” Kommissar says. “I’m going to ask the leader of the group who did win to take my place in the campaign. If she says yes, we can still do the campaign as planned, and I can concentrate on the technical parts instead of the artistic parts.”  
“Are you being serious right now?” Beca asks. “Are you offering me a _job_?”  
“A contract,” Kommissar says. “I spoke with my boss earlier, and he’s on board. Three months in Berlin, developing a set list and performance that showcases our software and highlights how good it is at dealing with voices. Another three months touring Europe actually doing performances.”  
“Berlin?” Beca says. “You said you live in Hamburg. How far is that?”  
“I’m going to Berlin for this,” Kommissar says, smiling. “And I’m coming along for the tour part. I’m a student, remember? Not exactly settled.”  
Her expression turns somber.  
“And that’s one risk,” she says. “You’ll have to deal with me pretty much every day for half a year, even if you decide in a week that you hate my guts and wish we’d never met.”  
“I could break the contract.”  
“You could. But it includes room and board, so if you break it you’ll have to pay for that yourself. Retroactively.”  
Beca sits still and silent for quite a while, thinking.  
“So what you’re saying,” she finally says, “is that you want me to spend half a year with you, doing what I love to do, travel to lots of exotic places, and get paid for it?”  
“They’ll be places like Düsseldorf, Lyons and Manchester,” Kommissar says. “They’re hardly exotic.”  
“From my point of view, they’re on another continent, so they’re exotic as fuck.”  
Kommissar smiles.  
“Fucking is _really_ not exotic, even to you americans,” she says.  
“Anyway,” Beca says. “The drawbacks are, you say, that we might not get along, and that I can’t back out of the contract.”  
“Yes.”  
“Who’ll own the music I make?”  
“If we use it in commercials, we pay you extra at a fixed rate and we own it. If not, you own it.”  
“Do I have to sign over my immortal soul?”  
“We’re Germans. We don’t have souls.”  
“Is that a yes or a no?”  
They both look at each other and, after a second, start to laugh.  
“You don’t have to sell your soul, _Mäuschen_ ,” Kommissar says. “It occurs to me, though, that there may be another, real, drawback.”  
“What?” Beca says.  
“It’s nearly certain that none of the people you want to impress, the big-time producers in LA and New York, will ever see this. It’s all in Europe, it’s all PR stuff. They don’t pay attention to that.”  
Beca thinks about it.  
“True,” she says. “But I can play recordings later, I will definitely get experience out of it and it’ll look amazing on my resumé. And in my memoirs, should I ever write them.”  
Kommissar puts her hands on each side of Beca’s face.  
“So will you do it?” she says. “I’m thinking that after six months like that, we will know without doubt if we want to stay together for the long run or not.”  
Six months. Six months away from everything she knows. Half a year without all the people she’s come to think of as hers over the past four years.  
Definitely more than six months without Chloe. If she goes off with Kommissar, that relationship is over. Beca may be pretty crap when it comes to personal relationships, but _that_ she can figure out herself.  
“When would it start?” she asks.  
Kommissar looks a bit sheepish.  
“Tomorrow,” she says. “You’d have to come with me to Hamburg, to sign papers and do some basic planning. You could probably go home for a few days after that, but we already have things in motion that mean we have to start working seriously the week after next at the latest.”  
“Ooh-kay,” Beca says. “That’s a bit short notice.”  
“Yes,” Kommissar says. “I’m sorry about that, _liebling_. I will not blame you if it’s too sudden and you can’t do it because of that. The possibility just occurred to me today, and I wanted to at least try.”  
Beca leans forward, aiming for a kiss. Kommissar meets her, eagerly, with closed eyes. For someone who looks so tough, Kommissar’s lips are very soft. Her tongue is gentle when she kisses, asking rather than taking. Her hands caress, her entire body welcomes. Beca’s heartbeat speeds up, and the way her own hands are touching Kommissar’s body is not all that gentle. She wants so badly to feel this woman naked and writhing under her, so very, very badly. She wants to take Kommissar’s nipples between her lips and tease them with her teeth. She wants to feel Kommissar’s hips twitch as Beca slides her fingers inside her. But instead she pulls back and groans in frustration.  
“I don’t do this,” she complains.  
“You don’t do what, little mouse?” Kommissar says.  
Her breath is ragged and her voice rough with want.  
“I don’t fall head over heels in love,” Beca says. “I just don’t.”  
“If you say so,” Kommissar says. “But then what is this? Why are you here on my lap instead of back there partying with your girlfriend?”  
Beca has no answer to that. The harsh truth is that she _has_ fallen head over heels in love. The only question is if it’s a brief thing, an intense passion that fades as fast as it blossomed, or something that could last. Is it strong enough to leave what she has for?  
“Yeah, that’s the question, isn’t it?” she says. “Look, I’m totally amazed by your offer, but I’ve got to think about it.”  
Beca tilts her head and looks Kommissar in the eyes.  
“It means giving up my life,” she says. “I have a life. It’s a good life. I have good friends, a really promising internship, a gorgeous girlfriend who loves me very much – I just don’t know if I can drop all that for just a chance at something. Even if that something promises to be totally amazing.”  
“She is indeed gorgeous,” Kommissar says. “I understand.”  
She points at a backpack leaning against a nearby chair.  
“Give me that, will you?” she says.  
Beca leans over, supporting herself with one hand on the floor, and just manages to snag a shoulder strap. She pulls it close. Kommissar pulls her back up on her lap. She takes the backpack, unzips it. Takes out a narrow piece of thick paper. Hands it to Beca.  
“Here,” she says.  
Beca looks at it. It’s a flight ticket. Copenhagen to Hamburg. Tomorrow.  
“I put on my prettiest smile and politest voice and talked very nice to the people at the check-in counter,” Kommissar says. “That ticket is for the seat next to mine.”  
Beca is about to protest. Kommissar puts a finger across her lips before she gets a word out.  
“If you’re in that seat when the plane takes off,” Kommissar says, “I’ll know that you chose to come with me. If the seat is empty…”  
She shrugs.  
Beca looks at the ticket.  
“Did you pay for this?” she says.  
“Of course,” Kommissar says.  
“But what if I don’t use it?”  
Kommissar smiles and puts her hand on Beca’s.  
“Then some lost money will not be what I’m sad about, _Mäuschen_ ” she says.  
Beca makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She takes the ticket in both hand and clutches it to her heart.  
“Oh my God,” she says. “You’re unbelievable.”  
“I think you should go now,” Kommissar says. “It’s getting harder not to touch you.”  
“Yeah,” Beca says.  
With an effort of will, she climbs off Kommissar’s lap and stands up.  
She has no idea what to say. There is no standard phrase for “I may or may not be seeing you ever again”.  
“So,” she says, sounding weak even to herself. “Be good.”  
“I will do my best,” Kommissar says. “You be good too.”  
“Yeah,” Beca says. “Sure.”  
Then she turns and leaves, flight ticket held so hard that her fingers hurt.

  
  


Das Sound Machine are still on the stage when Beca returns the main area, and it’s with some confusion that she realizes she’s only been gone for a few minutes. They’ve moved on to a pure-voice version of Kraftwerk’s “The Man Machine”. Still not Beca’s musical cup of tea, but the group was an important precursor to much of what she does like, so she’s listened to them as a matter of education. Maybe she should give the band another try, given that DSM has gone to the effort of doing one of their songs and Kommissar herself proudly told her about getting a body part autographed by one of the founding members.  
“There you are!” a loud, familiar voice says right next to her.  
“Amy,” Beca says. “I was just looking for you guys.”  
The whole old core set of the Bellas are there. Fat Amy at the front, with Cynthia Rose and Chloe flanking her. Behind them are Stacie, Lily, Jessica and Ashley.   
“We’re going to the ABBA museum,” Fat Amy says. “Are you coming?”  
Beca frowns.  
“I didn’t know they had one of those here,” she says.  
“No, it’s on Stockholm,” Amy says. “But Sweden’s right over there, so it can’t be that far.”  
“I keep telling her it’s like four hundred miles,” Cynthia Rose says, “but she’s not listening.”  
“They’re European miles,” Amy says. “They’re much shorter than proper Australian miles.”  
She nods wisely.  
“Your American miles are sort of in between,” she adds.  
Beca has learned the hard way not to argue with Fat Amy when she’s in that kind of mood.  
“It’s Thursday,” she says. “All museums in Europe are closed on Thursdays and Fridays. It’s compensation for being open on weekends.”  
If Amy makes shit up as she goes along, so can Beca.  
“Really?” Amy says.  
“As true as a European mile,” Beca says.  
Amy grins at her.  
“Ah, well then,” she says. “New plan! Let’s find those dudes from India and drink them under the table.”  
She heads off, making her indomitable way through the crowd. Most of the others follow. Cynthia Rose and Chloe stay behind.  
“Where _have_ you been?” Cynthia Rose asks.  
“I needed to talk to…” Beca says.  
Her voice sort of tapers off when she sees how Chloe is obviously trying not to look heartbroken.  
“…People,” she finishes.  
“Ah, them,” Cynthia Rose says.  
Unlike Chloe, Cynthia Rose looks pretty pissed off.  
“But now I’ve done that, and I’m here,” Beca points out. “With you.”  
Chloe moves next to Beca and slides her arm under Beca’s.  
“So you are,” she says.  
She kisses Beca on the forehead. Cynthia Rose looks somewhat, but not entirely, mollified.  
“I want to dance,” she says.  
“All right,” Beca says. “Let’s dance.”  
Cynthia Rose grimaces.  
“To this?” she says.  
“Sure,” Chloe says. “It’s got rhythm. It can be danced to.”  
She takes Beca’s hands and starts to move to the music, demonstrating beyond doubt that, yes, Kraftwerk can be danced to. Beca laughs and does her best to follow along. She’s never gotten the hang of improvised dancing, but she can follow Chloe’s lead. So they dance. After the first song, Chloe’s dejected look has gone away, and she’s laughing. She’s trying to both dance in the wild way she wants to and help Beca follow along. The result is a continuous flirting with disaster that amuses them both no end, and judging from how they’re soon dancing in an empty circle in the crowd, it seems it amuses others as well. Or it might just be that they just became the world champions.  
Das Sound Machine get off the stage after a few songs, and are replaced with the group from India. With, as a special guest star, Fat Amy from the Barden Bellas. Most of them look pretty drunk, but they can still sing. Beca doesn’t understand a word of what they’re singing, but it’s slow and crooning and she thinks it some kind of love song. She and Chloe hold each other tight, so tight, and sway slowly in time with the music. The empty circle around them dissolves as more couple join them. Beca’s head is resting on Chloe’s shoulder, her hand in the small of Chloe’s back. Their hips are pressed together, moving as one. She loves feeling Chloe’s body like this, soft and strong at the same time. Curvy and lithe and oh so desirable. She tilts her head up so she can whisper in Chloe’s ear.  
“I want to make love to you,” she whispers.  
“Here?” Chloe whispers back.  
Beca shakes her head.  
“We’d have to hide and it’d be uncomfortable and I’d worry about being discovered,” she whispers. “Back at the hotel.”  
“Do you want to leave right now?” Chloe says.  
“Not necessarily,” Beca says. “I’m fine with staying here longer. I just want you to know that I really want to do lovely things to that hot body of yours.”  
She takes Chloe’s earlobe between her lips and sucks on it, for emphasis. Chloe makes a low grumbling sound.  
“All right, hotel,” she says. 

  
  


The hotel room has narrow windows at the edges of the central window. The narrow ones open. They have built-in mosquito netting and are much too narrow for a human to pass through, but they let in the fragrant night air just fine. It’s nicely cool after the day’s heat and exertion.  
They stand in front of the window, with its fantastic view of Copenhagen and the night-dark sea, and slowly undress each other. They don’t really mean to synchronize, but they’re still dressed the same since the performance and after Chloe takes off Beca’s vest it only seems natural that Beca take off Chloe’s. Chloe undoes Beca’s pants, and slowly pulls them down her legs while kissing the skin as it gets revealed. Beca closes her eyes and puts a hand to the window so as not to fall over from suddenly weak knees. When her legs are bare and Chloe is standing up again, Beca kneels. She tries to do the same as Chloe just did to her, but even slower and with even more kissing and touching. There’s a growing wet spot at the center of Chloe’s panties. Beca doesn’t even try to resist the temptation to run her finger along it, and she smiles when Chloe swears and uses both hands to support herself against the window. She ends by quickly kissing Chloe’s feet, then stands up. Moments later, her tank top is flying across the room. Her bra follows while she’s trying to pull off Chloe’s tank top and bra at the same time. They get out of it somehow, and Chloe pushes Beca’s panties down. Beca steps out of them herself, prompting Chloe to do the same.  
Beca stops and takes a step back. She needs to look at Chloe. She never gets enough of seeing Chloe naked. She has done so lots of times over the years, and really the only thing that changed in that regard when they got together was that then she could also touch.  
“You are so beautiful,” she says.  
“So are you,” Chloe says. “Like a tiny little goddess.”  
“Shut up,” Beca says, embarrassed.  
She doesn’t believe she’s beautiful. She feels weird when someone says she is. Even if it’s Chloe.  
“Do you like the view?” Chloe says. “The one outside?”  
“I like the one in here better,” Beca says.  
“Flatterer,” Chloe says. “Come here.”  
Beca does. They embrace, and kiss, and it’s so much better when there are no clothes between them. She tries to feel all of Chloe at the same time, which of course is impossible. There is always somewhere she’s not touching, somewhere out of reach of hands and legs and lips.  
“Here,” Chloe says.  
She takes Beca’s hands, turns her to the side and puts her hands on the window.  
“What are you doing?” Beca says, but she stays in the position Chloe has put her in.  
“I want you to remember this view,” Chloe says. “This night. Spread your legs a bit.”  
Beca swallows and spreads her legs a bit.  
Chloe stands behind her, hugs her from behind. Kisses Beca’s neck, and cups Beca’s breasts with her hands. Her fingertips land on Beca’s nipples and slowly circle. Beca draws a slow, ragged breath.  
“Look at it,” Chloe whispers in her ear. “Isn’t it beautiful? Such a contrast between city and sea.”  
She licks Beca’s earlobe, and her thumbs help her fingers to roll Beca’s nipples harder.  
“This is where you proved you’re the best in the world,” Chloe whispers. “You’re the world champion of a cappella. There is nobody in the entire world better than you.”  
“There’s…” Beca gasps. “There’s the rest of you.”  
“We just do what you tell us to,” Chloe says. “The win is yours.”  
Her right hand moves down from Beca’s breast, across her taut stomach and in between her legs. Her fingers probe the slickness they find there, spreads it out over hypersensitive skin. Beca moans and it’s all she can do to keep standing.  
“Don’t worry,” Chloe says. “I’ll hold you.”  
She places two fingers at Beca’s opening, and Beca has only a moment to prepare before they slide into her vagina. She shouts, and this time her legs do buckle. Suddenly almost all her weight rests on the hand Chloe has between her legs. The fingers are forced even further inside, and Beca’s clitoris presses down on the heel of Chloe’s palm. Beca’s hips start moving, whimpers escape her lips.  
“Open your eyes,” Chloe whispers. “Look.”  
Beca does, somehow. She regains some stability in her legs, enough to help Chloe get some control over what goes on between Beca’s legs. While looking at the lights of the city, the lights of moving cars, the lights of boats out on the sea, Beca is slowly finger-fucked. She drops forward so not only her hands but her whole lower arms and her forehead rest on the cold glass. One of Chloe’s hands moves between Beca’s breasts, while the other alternates between fucking her vagina and rubbing her clit. Beca fights the orgasm, tries to make things last as long as she can before she comes. She looks out the window, tries to focus on the chill of the glass against her arms rather than the delicious hotness of Chloe against her back. She thinks she’s doing pretty well when her body proves her wrong. Climax explodes outward from her center, rippling through muscles and consciousness alike. If Chloe hadn’t been holding her, she definitely would have collapsed in a heap. Instead, she grinds her pussy down on Chloe’s hand, causing a fresh wave of orgasmic convulsions. She screams. Cold glass meets her fevered breasts. She comes a third time, weaker, slower, before it’s over. She’s leaning on the window, panting like she’d just danced five numbers in a row.  
She definitely will not forget this view.  
“Are you OK?” Chloe asks.  
Beca twists around, throws her arms around Chloe’s neck and kisses her for an answer.  
“Holy shit yes,” she says after the kiss, just to make sure she’s understood.  
“Good,” Chloe says. “I…”  
Beca pushes her gently in the chest. When she steps back, Beca follows along and keeps pushing. After a few steps, Chloe’s knees hit the edge of the bed and she falls backward onto the soft surface.  
Beca climbs after her, straddling her hips. She bends down and places a peck on Chloe’s lips.  
“I told you I want to do lovely things to your body,” Beca says.  
Chloe smiles, and Beca gets down to it.

  



	6. Departure

The hotel lobby is full of people wanting to check out, get cabs and leave. Beca is sitting on her suitcase, while Chloe is waiting in line to check them out. Cynthia Rose and Fat Amy are off getting cabs for the Bellas, and those of the group who Beca feel responsible for are in sight and seem to have their stuff in order. The older Bellas can care for themselves. Or at least should be able to. She can see a couple of them arguing with a receptionist, and draws an inward sigh. Working with the older ones have been an experience, that’s for sure. She wonders if they were as big pains in the captain’s ass back when they were in college or if that came later. The nicest of them was Emily’s mom, who was just a bit weird and fanatical. At least she didn’t try to control her daughter’s entire life.  
Beca catches sight of the daughter in question and frowns. Emily is busy hugging and kissing Benji. Whom Jesse had said _he_ was seeing.  
An arm lands across Beca’s shoulders. She flinches away as much as she can while sitting down, which is not very much.  
“Dude!” she says. “Taking liberties much?”  
“Ah, relax,” Jesse says. “We were fake dating for almost four years.”  
Of course it is Jesse. Who else would do that?” And of course he’s there just when he’s boyfriend is mashing faces with someone else.  
“Cute, aren’t they?” Jesse says, nodding toward Benji and Emily.  
“Wait, what?” Beca says.  
“Benji and Emily,” he says. “Over there.”  
“Yeah, I see them,” Beca says. “But didn’t you say that you and Benji were an item?”  
“Oh, we are,” Jesse says.  
Beca looks from Jesse to the kissing couple and back again.  
“That’s not a friend-type kiss,” she says.  
“I should hope not,” Jesse says. “They just spent the night together.”  
Beca looks at them again. Looks back at Jesse again.  
“You’re not upset about this?” she asks.  
“Of course not,” he says. “Just look at how happy they look! How could anyone not like that?”  
“But… You…”  
Beca makes a vague gesture from Benji to Jesse.  
Jesse smiles at her. Or at her consternation.  
“I love Benji,” he says. “I want Benji to be happy. Emily makes him happy. Very simple.”  
“But… You?”  
“Oh, he loves me too,” Jesse says. “He’s not leaving me.”  
Beca just looks at him.  
“So…” she says. “You’re OK with your boyfriend having a girlfriend.”  
He shrugs.  
“Of course,” he says.  
Beca looks at Benji and Emily. She tries to imagine that in Benji’s place is Chloe or Kommissar. The wave of disappointed anger that rises in her just from imagining it actually shocks her.  
“I could never deal with that,” she says.  
Jesse looks down at her.  
“Well, you know, Becky,” he says. “You’re just not very good at sharing.”  
She wants to protest, but he’s not wrong. She suddenly acutely aware that she has two very different flight tickets in her inside pocket.  
“I guess not,” she says.  
“Well,” he says, “it’s been nice chatting to you, but I have to go talk to my boyfriend and his girlfriend, to make sure our travel plans are all right.”  
“Sure,” Beca says. “Have a good trip. All three of you.”  
“And you,” he says. “I’ll see you when I see you.”  
He leaves, giving her a last smile over his shoulder.  
If Beca goes with Kommissar, she may well never see him again. She’d be gone for half a year at least, and who knows where he’ll be by then? It makes her feel weird just thinking about it.  
She takes out the flight tickets and looks at them. They’re both with Scandinavian Airlines. One to Hamburg at 2:30pm, one to London to change for Atlanta at 3:00pm. Both in her name. Both already checked in, which she suspects shouldn’t be possible. One Kommissar did for her, the other one she and Chloe did online earlier in the morning. They should be at the airport in plenty of time for her to catch either flight.  
“Hi!” Chloe says, right in front of her. “What are you doing?”  
“Just checking the tickets,” she says. “Again.”  
“I doubt they have changed,” Chloe says. “We’re checked out now. No problem. How’s the taxi coming?”  
“Er, I don’t know,” Beca says. “Haven’t seen either Cynthia Rose or Fat Amy in a while.”  
Not that she’s looked.  
“Stacie’s waving at us from the door,” Chloe says. “Let’s go.”

  
  


It turns out that one of the guys Stacie has been seeing in Copenhagen is a bus driver, and she’s convinced him to drive them to the airport.  
“What does this cost?” Beca asks. “Renting a whole bus can’t be cheap.”  
“Oh, he’s just borrowing it,” Stacie says. “I said if he drives us to the airport, he and I are going to spend the time until the plane leaves finding out how many places at the airport we can have sex in.”  
Even after knowing Stacie for as long as she has, there is a part of Beca that can’t help feeling that this is somehow wrong. That Stacie shouldn’t be trading herself for favors like that. Except that Beca knows perfectly well that that’s not how Stacie sees it. She genuinely wants to fuck the guy, or she wouldn’t be doing it. Anything else is just a bonus.  
“Oh, great,” Beca says. “Don’t miss the plane.”  
“Don’t drag him onto the plane,” Chloe adds. “That’d probably make us late.”  
“Don’t worry,” Stacie says. “I know what I’m doing.”  
She does, too, Beca thinks. More so than Beca does. Maybe she should ask her for advice.  
Beca frowns.  
Maybe she _should_ ask Stacie for advice. More than anyone else Beca knows, Stacie seems to have her love life sorted out. She seems not only to know exactly what she wants, she is somehow able to get it with an amazingly low level of drama. But then again, what Stacie wants is pretty simple, and Beca’s situation is far from it. So maybe not.  
“Vi har ankom til lufthavnen,” the driver says over the bus’ PA system.  
Since the bus just stopped and they’re parked outside the airport’s departure hall, Beca assumes that means they’ve arrived. Which means she’s one step closer to being forced to choose. Choose which ticket to use. Choose which woman to be with. Choose which life to lead. And she’s terrified of choosing wrong. Once she decides, there’s no going back.  
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Chloe says. “You look like you’re about to throw up.”  
She’s sitting between Chloe and the bus window. On the other side of Chloe, in the aisle, the rest of the Bellas are getting their things and leaving the bus. Soon it will be empty.  
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Beca says.  
Chloe sits up straight. Her expression hardens.  
“What?” she says. “Has it got to do with Kommissar?”  
Beca nods.  
“Did you fuck her?” Chloe asks.  
“No,” Beca says.  
She doesn’t say how close she got to doing that, or how badly she wanted to.  
“She offered me a job,” she says. “Or, rather, the company she works for did. They want me because I’m the head creative person behind the Bellas. Since we won.”  
“I guess that makes sense,” Chloe says, after a pause. “What do they want you to do?”  
“PR work, mainly,” Beca says. “But…”  
“But what?”  
“But it means going to Germany. Today. And living in Berlin for the next half year, at least. It means working with Kommissar, every day, for that whole time.”  
Beca bites her lip.  
“She wants me to live with her,” she says.  
The others have left the bus. Cynthia Rose and Fat Amy are standing outside, looking at Beca and Chloe. They look worried, Beca thinks.  
“She wants quite a bit more than that, I think,” Chloe says.  
“Yeah,” Beca says. “She does.”  
“Do you?”  
Beca can’t look Chloe in the eyes.  
“Yes,” she whispers.  
She can hear Chloe stop breathing. She feels her tense up, preparing to get up and… Beca is not sure what. Run away. Just leave. Beca turns and looks at her, reaches out and takes her hand.  
“I want you too,” she says. “I don’t know which one of you I want more. Please, Chloe!”  
Please what, she couldn’t say to save her life.  
Chloe has pulled away from her as far as the bus seat allows, but at least she lets Beca’s hand stay on hers.  
“If you go, we’re over,” Chloe says.  
“I know,” Beca says.  
“So are you?”  
“I don’t know,” Beca says, and she can hear perfectly well how weak and pathetic she sounds.  
Chloe glares at her.  
“Well, let me know when you decide,” she says. “I like to know if I have a girlfriend or not.”  
She gets up from the seat and takes her cabin bag down from the luggage rack with quick, angry motions.  
“Please, Chloe, I don’t…” Beca says.  
Chloe almost slams her bag to the bus floor.  
“You don’t what?” she says.  
Beca has no idea what to say. She remains silent.  
“Yeah, I thought so,” Chloe says.  
She walks away, out of the bus. She heads into the airport without stopping or looking back. Beca just sits there, looking after her.  
“Hey,” Stacie shouts from outside. “Aksel says you’ve got to get out of there so he can lock up the bus!”  
“Yeah, just a moment,” Beca says.  
She doesn’t care that Stacie can’t hear her. She grabs her backpack and steps out.  
“Finally!” Stacie says.  
The door closes behind Beca, with a final-sounding hiss. Her large suitcase has already been unloaded from the bus’ cargo compartment.  
“What the heck was that?” Cynthia Rose says.  
“Yeah, red looked like she was going to bite someone’s head off!” Fat Amy says. “Did you cheat on her with a fat Russian weight lifter?”  
Beca, Stacie and Cynthia Rose all turn and look at Fat Amy.  
“What?” Fat Amy says. “That happens! More often than you’d think.”  
“No,” Beca says. “I did not cheat on Chloe. With a fat Russian weight lifter or anyone else.”  
Well, _technically_ she’s not lying.  
“Are you going to?” Cynthia Rose asks.  
“Oh my God!” Stacie says. “Are you dumping Chloe?”  
“Maybe,” Beca mumbles.  
“That’s a bad answer, Beca,” Cynthia Rose says. “That really shouldn’t be a maybe.”  
“Is it the DSM chick?” Stacie says. “Because she’s hot. I’d do her.”  
“You already said that. Repeatedly,” Fat Amy says. “Also, you’d do anybody.”  
“I would not,” Stacie says. “I have strict standards. For example, I would not do Beca. She’s too grumpy and uptight.”  
Beca feels vaguely insulted, but she’s too upset to care.  
“But DSM chick sure has the hots for our Beca, and our Beca for DSM chick,” Cynthia Rose says. “That was obvious from the start. Is that’s what’s happening, Beca?”  
Beca nods.  
“Pretty much,” she says. “Kommissar wants me to come live with her.”  
“Transcontinental U-hauling?” Fat Amy says. “That’s pretty hardcore, for an American.”  
“Are you going to?” Stacie asks.  
The Danish bus driver hanging around behind her is starting to look bored. Or frustrated. Or both.  
“I don’t know,” Beca says.  
“Do you want to?” Cynthia Rose asks.  
“Oh, absolutely,” Beca says. “No question about it.”  
“Well, there you have it,” Stacie says. “Let’s go, Aksel.”  
She grabs the guy by the hand and takes off.  
“But you want to live with Chloe too,” Cynthia Rose says.  
Beca nods.  
“Yeah, no, you couldn’t deal with two continents at the same time,” Fat Amy says. “Sorry, kid. Gotta pick one.”  
Another bus appears, trying to get into the parking space where they’re standing. The three of them start moving toward the departure hall and the baggage drop.  
“How?” Beca says. “How do I pick one? I don’t want to hurt either of them.”  
“I don’t think that option is available any more,” Cynthia Rose says. “I need to go to the bathroom. See you in a bit.”  
She takes off.  
“Please tell me you have some good advice,” Beca says as the walk though the revolving door.  
“Sorry, pipsqueak,” Fat Amy says. “If it was me, and a couple of guys, I’d tell them to sort it out with chainsaws at dawn. But that’s not your style, and also, with those two girls, it’d be pretty much the same as choosing DSM chick to begin with. I love Red as a sister, skinny bones and all, but a fighter she is not.”  
Fat Amy looks suspiciously from side to side.  
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see a guy about some… sleep aids for the flight.”  
She leaves without waiting for a response. A few moments later, Beca hears her shouting “Yo! Dmitri!” in the distance.  
And she’s alone. Well, not alone, the departure hall is packed with people, but nobody she knows. All the Bellas are gone, presumably off on their own errands or already through security. She stands there, still in the crowd, for a little while, then gets in line for the checked baggage drop. She’ll need to do that no matter what, unless she plans to take up residence in the airport. Which would mean losing _both_ Chloe and Kommissar, so that’s a really bad option.  
She so does not want to lose Chloe. They were so close without being together for so long, and have been together for such a short time, that it’d break her heart not to give their relationship a real chance. She _knows_ they’ll be good together. They’ve already been good together for almost four years. Adding more love and, of course, lots of great sex to the relationship only made it better. Beca knows what she has with Chloe, and it is better than what she’s seen most people have. Also, she really truly does not want to cause Chloe the sort of pain a breakup would bring.  
And she so does not want to miss her chance with Kommissar. Never in her life has she clicked so instantly and so hard with anyone, and that definitely includes Chloe. Both on a physical and mental level. Kommissar is very much Beca’s counterpart in DSM, the creative force that drives the entire group to greatness. Not to diminish the efforts of all the group members, but both groups have this one person that adds a sort of spark that raises them over the rest. It’s not a coincidence that DSM and the Bellas were each others’ only real competition at Worlds. So there is the thought that if Beca and Kommissar work on something together, they can be _amazing_. When Beca is with Kommissar she feels… well, knee-weakening brain-melting arousal, yes, but also that weird feeling as if she’s suddenly found another half of herself she never knew she missed. It’s a heady and wonderful feeling. The only doubt is if it’ll last. She’s spent altogether a handful of hours with Kommissar, against four years with Chloe. Is it worth throwing away the great thing she knows she has for the even greater thing she might get?  
“Boarding card, please.”  
Beca looks up, surprised. As she’s been thinking, the queue has been moving. She’s standing in front of a counter almost taller than she is. Behind it is a middle-aged woman with an expression of supreme boredom.  
“Oh, er, just a moment,” Beca says.  
“Of course,” the woman says. “I’m sure everyone in the line behind you is happy to wait.”  
Beca looks at her tickets. They haven’t changed. She draws a deep breath and picks one of them.  
“Here,” she says. “That’s my ticket.”  
She hands it to the attendant.  
“Thank you,” the woman says. “You’ll be on your way in no time.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~There is one chapter left at this point. I have written two completely different versions of the final chapter: a Chloe version and a Kommissar version. I'm going to post _one_ of them in a few days. Which one I post will depend on the comments I get from you, dear readers :-)~~
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ~~So, which ticket do you think Beca _did_ give to the attendant, and which one do you think she _should have_ handed over?~~
> 
>  
> 
> Result, from comments here and on Tumblr: numerically more for Kommissar, more passionate responses for Chloe. I'd feel bad only posting one, so both of them are coming up shortly. Choose whichever one you prefer. Or, if you hate both, you can always write your own! :-) Let me know if you do!
> 
> [Kommissar ending.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4260681/chapters/9702657)
> 
> [Chloe ending.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4260681/chapters/9702675)


	7. End: Kommissar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the alternate ending for if Beca uses the ticket to Hamburg.

_…Six months and a day later._

“Sweetie, we need a break.”  
Kommissar says it over breakfast the day after they’ve returned from their combined DJ and a cappella tour of Europe, and Beca’s heart just about stops.  
“Break?” she says. “What do you mean we need a break?”  
She thinks their relationship is going great. Six months under very stressful circumstances, and they haven’t argued even once. They’ve been at each other’s sides more or less constantly, and the sex has continued to be spectacular. Or at least Beca thinks so. Kommissar is more experienced, so maybe she finds Beca lacking. Beca, on her part, is more in love with Kommissar than ever.  
“We are both exhausted,” Kommissar says. “We’ve been working very hard for half a year. We deserve some time off work.”  
Oh. _That_ kind of break. Beca starts breathing again.  
“Right,” Beca says. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”  
She eats a bit of toast. Kommissar has a bowl of porridge.  
“Er, so do you have an idea what you want to do?” Beca says. “I mean, it’s November, most tourist things will be pretty well closed.”  
They’re sitting at what Beca thinks of as Kommissar’s kitchen table, although it is actually more like theirs. Kommissar’s roommate Heike moved out while they were on tour. Beca started paying half the rent, and Kommissar didn’t protest. Since the flat is rented furnished, that means the table is theoretically as much Beca’s as Kommissar’s. In practice, Kommissar has lived there for two years and Beca has dropped off her bag. The first three months Heike was still there, so the company put Beca up in a hotel. Heike got a lot of time to herself those months.  
“I do, actually,” Kommissar says. “There’s a place we used once with DSM. A conference resort, really. Old buildings, countryside, really nice spa, big rooms with huge beds… Also lots and lots of peace and quiet. Say, a week?”  
It does sound awfully tempting.  
“Sure,” Beca says. “Let’s do that.”

  
  


In the days between when they decide to go and they actually leave, three record companies, four talent agencies and a PR firm call and want to hire them. Kommissar tells all of them to email proposals, and she and Beca will look those over and get back to them. Maybe.  
All of them except one of the talent agencies actually do send proposals.

  
  


The resort is just as nice as Kommissar said. In the lull before Christmas and year-end season, it’s also totally empty but for Kommissar, Beca and the staff. The landscape around it is farmland, with lots of harvested fields and herds of cows huddling together for warmth. Beca and Kommissar do quite a bit of huddling together as well, although not for warmth.

  
  


Friday afternoon finds them lounging in their room. Rain is beating a calming rhythm against the roof and window. Beca is lying on her back on the bed, stark naked and studying German. Kommissar is on the couch, wearing a robe that she hasn’t bothered to tie shut. She’s reading papers.  
“Do you realize we’re rich?” she suddenly says.  
Beca looks up.  
“We are?” she says.  
“ElektroWelle gave you, what, fifty thousand Euros for these six months, yes?”  
“Yeah,” Beca says.  
She rolls over on her stomach, so she can see Kommissar properly. Kommissar doesn’t even try to hide how her eyes follow Beca’s breasts as she moves.  
“That’s pretty damn good for a fresh artist with no track record,” she says.  
“No track record except winning an international musical competition,” Kommissar says. “Did you read your contract?”  
“Not in great detail,” Beca says. “I mean, I knew I was going to sign so I could be with you, so I just checked that it didn’t have any lock-in clauses.”  
“Did you know they recorded the gig in Marseille and released it as an album? Under the advertising clause?”  
“No,” Beca says. “That I did not. How’s it doing?”  
“They’re getting their investment back just from that,” Kommissar says.  
“Seriously?” Beca says. “It’s selling that well?”  
“Number two on Italian iTunes,” Kommissar says.  
“Damn,” Beca says. “Wait, a large part of that gig was you.”  
Kommissar nods.  
“These,” she says, shaking the stack of papers she’s been reading, “are offers for us as a group. They vary in the details, how much we get for what and when, but they’re all based not only on both our a cappella track records, but also on a best-selling album.”  
She puts the whole stack of papers aside.  
“Beca, any of these will make us rich. Millionaires.”  
“Are you serious right now?”  
“Yes,” Kommissar says. “What was that phrase you used? Dixie Chicks serious.”  
Beca thinks about it for a moment.  
“Holy shit,” she says. “So which one should we accept?”  
Kommissar picks the papers up again.  
“Which would we rather be locked in for, three years or three albums?”  
“Three albums,” Beca says. “We can do those in two years max.”  
Kommissar puts down some of the papers.  
“How confident are we that we can make new music that sells well? As in, do we want low base high percentage or high base low percentage.”  
“High percentage,” Beca says. “No question.”  
Another bunch of papers goes down.  
“Germans or French?” Kommissar says.  
They look at each other.  
“Germans,” they say in chorus.  
One folder goes not onto the couch with the others, but into the bin.  
“So we negotiate with these,” Kommissar says. “I think we can get the base up a bit, but the offer is good as it stands.”  
“So wait,” Beca says. “We’re going to be rock stars?”  
“As in cocaine, groupies and dying before thirty?” Kommissar says. “I hope not.”  
“Maybe not that part,” Beca agrees. “But the rich, famous, musician part?”  
“Absolutely,” Kommissar says.  
Beca gets off the bed, comes over to Kommissar and sits on her lap.  
“We should celebrate,” she says.  
Kommissar’s hand finds one of Beca’s breasts.  
“We’ve done plenty of that already this week,” she says.  
“That’s not what I meant,” Beca says. “But please don’t stop. I meant getting an extra fancy meal or something. The best wine. Our nicest clothes. You know, celebrate.”  
“I’ll talk to them,” Kommissar says. “I’m sure they can arrange something nice.”  
There’s an odd note to her tone of voice, Beca thinks. She doesn’t bother to ask, because just then Kommissar kisses her, and for a long time words are unnecessary. 

  
  


Their dinner table is amazing. It’s a big one, standing alone in a large alcove in the dining room. Old windows give a slightly wobbly view of the rain-soaked fields, nicely contrasting with the light from the live candles in the chandelier and on the table. Their places are set close and at an angle, so they can both touch and look at each other. Everything on the table, tablecloth, plates, cutlery, flower vase, the lot of it, looks to Beca like it’s at least a hundred years old. Except the flowers, which are fresh. How they got fresh flowers on short notice in the middle of November, she has no idea.  
As Beca sits down, she notices that the open wine bottle standing on the table is from 2006.  
“Is that what rich people drink?” she says.  
Kommissar smiles.  
“If they have taste,” she says. “It’s from a very well-regarded winery in the Mosel valley, with a history going back to the 14th century. 2006 was a very good year for them.”  
The waitress pours for them.  
“Thank you, Anna,” Kommissar says.  
She raises her glass.  
“To us,” she says.  
Beca takes hers.  
“To us,” she agrees.  
They clink their glasses against each other, and drink. The wine tastes like liquid sunshine.  
“Oh my God,” Beca says. “So that’s the good stuff, huh?”  
Kommissar has closed her eyes. She looks up and smiles.  
“You like?” she says.  
“It’s amazing,” Beca says.  
“Good enough for a celebration?”  
“God, yes!”  
Kommissar strokes Beca’s cheek.  
“Good,” she says. “Shall we see if the food lives up to the wine?”  
“I don’t see how it could,” Beca says. “But by all means.”  
They eat their way slowly through a seven-course meal. They get different wines with each course. None is quite as fantastic as the first one, but on the other hand they complement the food very well. The food is great. Beca is frankly amazed at what the place has been able to arrange at only a few hours notice.  
“I can’t believe this is my life,” Beca says while she’s picking at the last little bit of dessert.  
It’s a chocolate… _thing_. It’s great, but she’s just too full to properly enjoy it.  
“Can’t believe good or can’t believe bad?” Kommissar asks.  
“So, so good,” Beca says. “I really should send my dad a thank-you card for pushing me into joining an activity group of some kind at Barden.”  
“Good,” Kommissar says. “I’m glad. It’d be a terrible disappointment if you weren’t happy.”  
It suddenly occurs to Beca that she _is_ happy.  
“Beautiful girlfriend, great job, about to become rich and modestly famous,” she says. “I never thought my life would get to a place like this.”  
Kommissar bites her lip. Beca suddenly realizes that she looks nervous.  
“ _Liebling_?” she says. “What’s the matter?”  
“I’m wondering,” Kommissar says. “If you would like to change one of those.”  
Beca frowns.  
“Change how?”  
Kommissar fumbles under the table for a moment, and her hands come back holding a small velvet-covered box. She puts it on the table between them, and opens it. Inside are two matching gold rings.  
“What if,” she says, and now she’s clearly sounding nervous, “instead of a beautiful girlfriend, you had a beautiful wife?”  
Beca looks at the rings. A silly wide smile spreads over her face. The rings are simple, plain golden bands.  
“When did you get these?” she says.  
“At Copenhagen Airport,” Kommissar says. “Before I knew if you were coming or not. I thought that if you did, I would some day use them like this. If you did not, they would be a memento of something precious I lost.”  
There’s a lump in Beca’s throat. She throws herself around Kommissar’s neck, hugging and kissing her as intensely as she can.  
“Yes,” she whispers. “Of course yes.”  
Kommissar draws an audible sigh of relief, and then they are kissing for real.

  
  


“Wait,” Beca says some time later. “This dinner wasn’t at all spur of the moment, was it?”  
Kommissar shakes her head.  
“So how long exactly have you been planning this?” Beca says.  
“I knew after the first week that I wanted to propose to you after the first six months were up,” Kommissar says. “I started planning shortly after. More seriously the closer it got.”  
The dinner is over and the table cleared. They each have a glass of a very sweet dessert wine.  
“I didn’t think nearly that far ahead,” Beca says. “I’ve pretty much only been trying to hang onto the ride.”  
“You moved to another country with no planning and no preparation and where you don’t speak the language,” Kommissar says. “I think you have dealt impressively well.”  
Beca holds up her left hand so she can see the unfamiliar gold band encircling her ring finger.  
“I feel like I won the lottery,” she says.  
Kommissar laughs.  
“Thank you,” she says. “I do too.”  
“So when do we get married?” Beca says. “And where?”  
“And what do we do about names,” Kommissar says. “Many things to discuss.”  
Beca tilts her head.  
“From a commercial point of view, Kommissar Mitchell probably works better than Beca Meyer,” she says. “But that’s really an artist name issue, not a real name issue.”  
“Next summer,” Kommissar says. “I think we should get married next summer.”  
“Works for me,” Beca says.  
Kommissar swishes the wine around her glass, drinks some.  
“What do you want to do right now?” she says.  
Beca drains her glass.  
“You,” she says, grinning.  
“Very well,” Kommissar says, also smiling. “I’m ready to perform my wifely duties.”  
Beca grimaces.  
“God, don’t call it that,” she says. “Also, we’re not married yet.”  
“I’m sorry,” Kommissar says. “Let me rephrase. I am more than ready to pleasure my beloved.”  
Beca blushes a little.  
“That sounds better,” she says, voice a bit rough. “Let’s go.”

  
  


The rain keeps up far into the night. Beca is sitting in their bed, propped up on a small mountain of pillows. Kommissar is lying next to her, sound asleep. Beca is tired enough to sleep, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want this day to end. She looks at Kommissar. Her wife-to-be. The thought makes her head spin. She wants to shout it to the world, let everyone know how happy she is. Wants them to be happy for her.  
Careful not to wake her fiancée, she reaches out and grabs her laptop. She may not be able to shout from Germany to the United States, but she can do the next best thing. She opens the lid, and when the computer has woken up brings up her Facebook tab. She goes to her profile settings and clicks to edit her relationship status. Carefully, she choses “Engaged” in the drop-down menu. She sits with her finger still on the trackpad for a moment, new status chosen but not confirmed. She is engaged. To be married. She really is. Her mom is going to explode with joy. Smiling happily, Beca clicks the save button. She closes the laptop and drops it on the thick carpet next to the bed.  
Content and happy, she snuggles up next to Kommissar and falls asleep.

  



	8. End: Chloe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the alternate ending for if Beca uses the ticket for London and Atlanta.

_…One year later._

Beca walks out of the meeting room trying to hide her irritation. The meeting ran long, and she’s going to have to take a taxi in order to be in time to pick up Chloe. But the meeting went well, and she stands to make enough money from the deal they just agreed on to pay for hundreds of cab rides.  
If everything goes to plan. If the songs she produced sell as well as they hope. Chloe insists she should write songs, not just produce them, but producing is what she’s getting a reputation for being really good at. Writing her own stuff can wait.  
“See you in the morning!” she shouts.  
“Not if I see you first!” her boss shouts back.  
She takes the steps down two at a time. It’s faster than waiting for the office’s old and cranky elevator, and she takes what chances she gets to keep her stamina up now that she’s mostly stuck behind a desk during the days. It’s getting too obvious for Beca’s taste how far behind Chloe she’s falling. But then, Chloe actually works at a health club and quite literally spends most of her days exercising. While making it look effortless.  
“Running late,” she texts Chloe. “Leaving office now.”  
“OK,” Chloe texts back. “I’m at the Starbucks next door.”

  
  


The taxi, unusually for New York, makes good time. Beca gets there only about fifteen minutes later than planned, which is better than usual. She steps out of the car onto the busy sidewalk, right in front of the Starbucks, and when she looks up Chloe is right there on the other side of the glass. Smiling at her.  
Warmth spreads through Beca. She feels a smile break out on her face. Most of the stress from her day at the office just melts away. She hurries inside and up to Chloe.  
“Hi,” she says.  
They kiss. Very quick, just a peck. They’re in public, after all. On display from the street, even.  
“Hi yourself,” Chloe says. “How did it go?”  
“Good,” Beca says. “Really good.”  
Chloe raises an eyebrow.  
“How really good?”  
“If it pans out, we can move to a bigger flat kind of good.”  
Chloe squeals and kisses her again, more intimately this time.  
“ _If_ it pans out,” Beca says when they’re done.  
“Of course it will pan out,” Chloe says. “You’re the best.”  
Beca is lying to Chloe. A bigger, nicer flat is actually at the low end of the expected range. If they manage to hit the better half of the projections, she and Chloe can start looking at something like a town house on Long Island. But she doesn’t want to say that yet, so as not to raise hopes she can’t deliver on.  
“We’ll see,” Beca says, still smiling like a loon. “How was therapy?”  
“Good,” Chloe says. “I’m told I’m making progress.”  
Beca strokes her hand.  
“Just remember it’s not a competition, OK?” she says. “The whole point is to make you feel better, love. But you’re not having as many nightmares, I can tell that.”  
It was a few months after they’d moved to New York that Beca happened on a post on Tumblr that described some of her girlfriend’s behaviors with uncanny accuracy. The “spend all money quickly before it’s gone” thing. The planning the next meal immediately after finishing one. Many more things like those. They are, she now knows, things that are common in people who grew up in severe poverty. There are other things, like the nightmares, that make Beca sure that Chloe’s childhood was quite a bit worse than just poor. Chloe still won’t talk about it with Beca, but after Copenhagen the nightmares got bad enough that she eventually agreed to start seeing a therapist. Beca still feels guilty about it.  
“I know. I really think I am getting better. And we should get going,” Chloe says. “Don’t want to get there late.”  
“No,” Beca agrees. “Are you finished?”  
Chloe downs the last of her latte in one quick gulp.  
“Yes,” she says.  
“Well then,” Beca says. “Let’s go.”

  
  


The office is old, probably from the 1970s some time. It hasn’t been maintained very well, but it is clean. The woman behind the desk looks like she’s been there since the 1970s too, and not very well maintained either. She glares sourly at Beca and Chloe over glasses slid down to the tip of her nose.  
“You realize of course that not very long ago at all a couple like you would not have been allowed to adopt under any circumstances,” she says in a flat monotone. “But these days the rules have changed and I have to consider you the same as everyone else.”  
“Good for us,” Beca says. “Yay progress!”  
Chloe shushes her. The adoption agent does not look amused.  
“I’ve reviewed your application in the light of all relevant guidelines and regulations and it is looking good,” the adoption agent drones. “I have put you on the list of approved recipients and you should be getting notification that you are in the queue for a child in the not too distant future.”  
Chloe tries to stifle a squeal of delight, but doesn’t entirely succeed.  
“Please contain any expressions of excessive enthusiasm until you have left the office,” the agent says.  
She puts a sheaf of papers on the desk.  
“Sign these,” she says. “As you should already be aware the queue is not strictly first come first served but goes by priority and expressed preference and since you have expressed that you are willing to accept an older child you should start getting offers in roughly three to six months time.”  
“A girl,” Chloe says. “We want a girl.”  
The agent looks at her like she just crawled out from under a rock.  
“We are aware,” she says.  
Beca takes the papers and looks through them. As far as she can tell, they’re the standard set of adoption forms.  
“They’re OK,” she says to Chloe. “Let’s sign.”  
“They’re OK?” the agent says.  
“Oh, I read a lot of contracts,” Beca says. “For my job. It’s gets to be a habit.”  
“These were drawn up by the best legal minds the city of New York could afford to hire and refined over and over again over a period of decades,” the agent says. “You sign them or you don’t adopt.”  
“Sure,” Beca says. “As I said, no problem.”  
She takes out a pen and signs, then hands both papers and pen to Chloe. Chloe signs too, and hands the papers to the agent and the pen to Beca.  
“As I said it should be three to six months,” the agent says. “Congratulations and you can leave now, I have another couple coming in five minutes.”

  
  


They get the really expensive takeout sushi to celebrate, along with a bottle of good champagne. They sit snuggled up on their living room couch, entangled in each other, eating and drinking.  
“We’re having a baby,” Chloe says, voice full of wonder.  
“We’re having a _child_ ,” Beca says. “We said we’d take girls up to four years old, and from what I’ve seen of the statistics, that means we’re getting a four-year-old. Most people want toddlers.”  
“Three to six months,” Chloe says. “Beca, we’ll be parents by Christmas.”  
She puts a piece of California roll in Beca’s mouth. Beca stares at her, mouth full. She says something around the piece of sushi.  
“Eat first, talk later,” Chloe says.  
Beca chews and swallows.  
“Oh my God,” she says. “We’re going to be parents by Christmas.”  
“We are,” Chloe says.  
“Sweetie,” Beca says. “What kind of crazy person are letting _us_ be parents?”  
Chloe frowns. Her expressions goes serious.  
“Beca, they’re not crazy,” she says. “Pretty much everybody who ever became a parent did so with no approval whatsoever. We were approved. We’re better than pretty much everybody.”  
She sits up, turns fully to Beca.  
“We’re going to get a girl who’s having it hard,” she says. “Someone who has nobody in the world to take care of her. And we’re going to give her a good life.”  
She’s putting an emphasis on the last sentence that gives Beca chills. She thinks of the things in Chloe’s background that only her therapist knows about. She knows that taking care of a young girl and giving her a better life than she would have had is very, very important to Chloe. Which is fine. Beca wants to bring up a child together with the love of her life, which is an entirely compatible ambition.  
She kisses Chloe, then strokes her hair.  
“Yes, love,” she says. “We are.”

  



End file.
